The Light That Guides
by an-extraordinary-muse
Summary: In the lull after Slade Wilson's orchestrated chaos, Team Arrow must find a way to rebuild and reshape what has been shaken - whilst also dealing with a surprise baby Diggle on the way; a romantic element that refuses to be ignored; hacking into buildings on the other side of the world; and a terrorist loose in Starling City. Piece of cake. (Olicity).
1. Prologue

**_Author's Note: So I posted this on AO3 a few days ago, but for some reason FF was giving me a hard time so I'm only just getting it up here now. Anyway, hooray for a new story! I posted the original idea for this on my tumblr a little bit ago, and I'm looking forward to fleshing it out into a full story. Hope you guys enjoy it. :)_**

**_Spoilers: None. Jumps off just after the end of season 2._**

**_Disclaimer: Not mine. _**

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_Words have weight, Oliver. They have power. Use them carefully; their echoes leave lasting impressions. _

His father's words, imparted to him a lifetime ago, reverberated in his mind. Around and around they went, bouncing off of each other as if they were brightly colored bouncy balls, carelessly thrown and then forgotten. He couldn't say why he'd remembered his father's advice so suddenly.

No. That was a lie. He knew exactly why those words were pestering him, why they were creating a chaos in him that he refused to acknowledge. The echo of his father's words kept smashing into the echo of his own: _I love you_.

Across from him, Felicity was picking through the piles of displaced trash that had once been the Foundry in an effort to salvage any bits of technology or wiring that she could use to rebuild. The lair was moving. They couldn't keep their base of operations in the basement of a club that Oliver no longer owned. The safety building - the redundancy Oliver had set up had escaped Isabel's notice, and so had not been ripped away from him in the take over. That was one small mercy, according to Felicity. She didn't mention anything about their inability to furnish or otherwise set up their secondary lair now that Oliver was destitute. Well, not exactly destitute, but close enough to not make much difference.

Oliver's eyes tracked her movement as Felicity sifted through the junk. The evidence of the concussion she'd sustained from the wreck was in the slight jerk of movements that were normally seamless. Though the blood in her hairline was gone, an angry bruise had taken up residence in the same spot. Every time Oliver saw it, he felt that same terrible thrill of adrenaline he'd experienced after the crash.

_Is she breathing? _

They'd had one too many close calls lately. Too many chances for everything to go wrong, too many plans that could've gone to Hell with no warning or hope of redemption.

They had almost lost. _He_ had almost lost, so much; too much.

_ Do you understand? _

He'd done what was necessary, what Felicity herself had told him to do. Slade had had him backed into a corner. Still, it left a bad taste in his mouth when he thought about what he'd done to her, what he'd put her through. He had offered Felicity up as bait - dangled her from a hook like a choice worm in order to draw out the big fish. The plan had worked, but he didn't hate it any less for its success. If it hadn't worked -.

"Oliver?" Felicity was looking at him, a mess of wires clutched in one hand. "You're staring at me."

"How are you feeling?" He went to her automatically, crossing into her space like it was no different from his own. The bruise at her hairline stood out starkly against her pale skin.

"A little dizzy still, but not bad," Felicity replied honestly. "Nothing to worry about." He shot her a glare, which she brushed off with a casual shrug. "I'm fine, Oliver."

In reality, he knew that. All things considered, she'd been lucky to come out of the last seventy-two hours with nothing more than a concussion and a few scrapes. That wasn't the problem.

Oliver had always felt … connected to Felicity in some way. He knew where she was the moment he stepped into the room. He was always aware of her. Now, though - now that awareness had morphed into something else, something electric. Oliver didn't just feel connected to Felicity, he felt tied to her, as if some part of him had reached out and wrapped itself around her. He felt hyper aware of her now, as if he were a rod and she a lightning bolt.

Logically, he knew that she was okay. He was just … having a hard time dealing with the strange new reactions he was having to her presence.

"Find anything usable?" he asked, motioning to the damaged equipment littering the floor. He needed to stop thinking about it.

"A few wires so far," she answered, sighing. "I'll probably only be able to run one monitor for awhile. I know I have some spare motherboards somewhere at home, I'll have to dig them out. Rebuilding the mainframe will be the hardest part."

Oliver nodded, then said, "What?" when he realized Felicity was smirking at him.

"Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

"I'm not a complete idiot, Felicity. I know what a mainframe is."

"Just checking."

"Ollie?" A new voice called.

As one, Felicity and Oliver turned to see Laurel descending the stairs.

Though he'd belonged to that nickname for most of his life, it felt wrong to hear it uttered in this space, ruined as it was. That was new, too - he'd never particularly minded before. Now, though, the nickname was just a reminder of a past that shamed him. A past that was, in some part, responsible for the destruction of his city.

"Laurel." She was wearing Sara's leather jacket and looked as though she'd gone home and cleaned up.

"I'm gonna keep looking," Felicity said quietly, excusing herself.

Oliver met Laurel halfway, thinking as he did so that it was strange to see her here. The way that her eyes cast around made him think that she was trying to recall what this place had looked like before; what that pile had been before its demise, where that glass had come from.

Oliver acknowledged that this woman, who had once fit into so many places in his life, did not fit here.

"What will you do now?" Laurel questioned by way of a greeting.

"Rebuild." He tried not to sigh tiredly when he said it, and almost succeeded.

"Where will you go?"

The answer was automatic, and a lie. "I don't know yet."

Laurel appraised him, gauging what his answer would be before he gave it. "You won't tell me when you do, will you?"

This time, he told her the truth. "No. You're in line to be the new District Attorney, Laurel. It's better if you don't know."

Oliver thought Laurel might be recalling an earlier conversation, when he'd told her that they needed to get back to being just the three of them, because she didn't press the issue. He was grateful for that. While he didn't blame Laurel for what had happened, the sight of her now only reinforced his distaste for what he'd had to do to protect her from Slade. Saving Laurel, getting the upper hand over Slade, had required more of Oliver than he'd previously thought himself capable of giving. Something that he hoped he'd never have to give again.

_To fight the unthinkable, you have to be willing to do the unthinkable. _

Laurel's eyes flicked to a spot over his shoulder. Her voice was quieter - gentler - when she said, "I didn't know."

He knew what - who she was looking at, then. He didn't need to turn around to see Felicity, still expertly working her way between the rubble of equipment. The Foundry had been her home as much as it had been his; she knew exactly what she was looking for, and where it should be.

Oliver was saved from answering by a muttered, "Why can't there be some sort of superhero insurance? My poor computers," which was followed immediately by Digg calling out a greeting. Oliver hid his smile - a result of Felicity's muttering - in an answer to that greeting.

"Down here, Diggle."

Lyla was with him. She smiled by way of a greeting, but there seemed to be some underlying tension between her and Diggle. Oliver didn't pry.

Digg nodded at Laurel. "How's your father?"

"Grumpy because he has to stay in the hospital, but otherwise he's on the mend. He'll be on desk duty for awhile when he gets out - no one's told him yet."

"Smart."

"Digg? Could you give me a hand moving this?" Felicity asked then.

"Take care, Laurel."

"You, too."

Digg and Lyla stepped away to assist Felicity, and when Oliver turned his attention back to Laurel there was something in her expression that he couldn't quite grasp. "I'm gonna go. You've got a lot to do, and I told my dad I'd sneak him in a burger. Be careful out there, and take care of yourself, Ollie."

He smiled and gave her a short nod. "If you need anything."

"I know."

As Oliver watched Laurel disappear up the stairs, Felicity's voice in the background explaining to Digg and Lyla what she was looking for, he had the unshakeable feeling that it would be a long time before he saw either one of the Lance sisters again.

For the first time in seven years, that thought didn't bother him. Despite everything that had happened, and all the new challenges that were ahead of him, as he rejoined his team Oliver Queen felt free in a way that he'd never known.

"I vote we get a hammock for the new lair," Felicity informed them.

"Where would we put a hammock, Felicity?" Digg queried.

"Next to the salmon ladder, so I can still see. Wait - that came out wrong. I didn't mean …"

Oliver smiled. They had work to do.


	2. No is not an option

Felicity bounced her toes to the rhythm of the song and lobbed another piece of caramel popcorn into the air. The small treat came down in an arc and landed perfectly in her mouth. She wasn't sure if she should feel proud, or ashamed, of that fact.

She decided on proud.

Chewing - and swallowing - upside down was a strange sensation, and more than a little difficult. Her throat was beginning to feel scratchy from the exertion of eating at an odd angle, but Felicity ignored the urge to sit up and get a drink. She wasn't done examining the patterns on her ceiling yet. She'd already found a (somewhat crude) dolphin and the Pisces constellation in the rough texturing above her, and it'd be a shame to give up looking now.

Though she was bad at many things - like phrasing simple sentences in non-embarrassing ways - Felicity was very good with money. Part of that was just an innate ability, and part of it had come directly from her mother. One couldn't spend an extended period of time with a Vegas cocktail waitress and not learn a thing or two about handling money. Felicity Smoak was a woman of humble origins, and doubted that she'd ever be truly rich, but over the years she had learned to live comfortably with what she had. Which was why, only one year earlier, when her idiot boss had jetted off to an unpopulated island and left her with the cool sum of a million dollars, Felicity had been _pissed_.

She'd known that Oliver had given her and Diggle the money because of his overdeveloped sense of guilt, and because he had wanted them to be able to rebuild. That had only made a tiny dent in her anger, however, because _who just gave away a million dollars? _Even if it was to friends, after a natural disaster that he felt responsible for. Felicity had been upset by the monetary gift at first, thinking that it betrayed just how little Oliver really knew her - did he really think that his money mattered to her? Only after much deliberation, and a few conversations with Digg, had Felicity come to realize that the money wasn't a reflection on her, but on Oliver.

In one of their conversations, John Diggle, ever the wise man, had posited a question: "What can Oliver do that money can't?"

Felicity had understood, then, and stopped being angry. And immediately set to work on rebuilding and refurnishing the lair with state of the art everything, using the money Oliver had left her. Diggle had warned her not to expect much if - when - they got Oliver to return, but Felicity had forged ahead with her tireless optimism. Oliver would come back, and they'd be a team again - criminals beware.

Before the money was gone, however, the money manager side of her had reared its economical head. She had debated mightily with herself for a few weeks before finally giving in and using a chunk of that money for something that had nothing to do with Oliver or the vigilante; something that was entirely for herself.

Felicity had paid off her townhouse.

Now, with her feet in the air as she hung upside down over her couch cushions and caught popcorn from the air, she was immensely glad that she had made that decision. Not having a mortgage payment - and not having to worry about keeping a roof over her head - was a great relief now that Felicity found herself without a job. She had enough stockpiled in her savings to be okay for a bit, but she had to be careful until she could find new employment.

Which was why she was entertaining herself by catching thrown popcorn at two o'clock on a Friday.

Felicity ate a few more pieces before finally giving in to the sand paper scratchiness of her throat and pulling herself up into a seated position. She could barely remember what it was like to not have a job - she'd even worked her way through a demanding college curriculum - and found that she wasn't overly fond of the empty hours.

Two weeks had passed since Hurricane Slade had come and gone. Two weeks that felt like two months to Felicity. The MIT grad had turned in nearly a dozen resumes to the IT departments of Starling City's top companies, most of which were Fortune 500 members. So far, she hadn't received even a single call back.

Oliver - who was also jobless, and in more dire straits than Felicity - had told her that it was probably due in no small part to the part of her resume that listed Queen Consolidated as a previous employer. She hadn't said anything in answer, but thought that he was probably right. And that just pissed her off.

An unexpected knock on her door made her jump. She stared at the wooden expanse for a split second and then hopped to her feet to peer through the peephole.

Oliver was on the other side.

"Hey," Felicity greeted as soon as she'd pulled the door open. "What's up?"

Oliver shrugged a shoulder to draw attention to the black duffel bag that hung there. "I was hoping I could steal a few minutes with your shower."

Felicity grinned and shook her head simultaneously, then stepped out of the doorway in silent invitation.

"I don't understand why you insist on sleeping in that basement," she said as she closed the door.

"Because the bank owns the manor," Oliver retorted dryly. This was not the first time they'd had this particular argument.

"It barely even has a proper bathroom, Oliver."

"Which is why I'm here."

Felicity sighed and swept her arm in the direction of the bathroom. "You know where it is. Have you had lunch yet? Why do I bother asking, of course you haven't."

She'd already turned and headed for the kitchen, so she didn't see the answering smirk on Oliver's lips. He could hear her rummaging through cupboards and drawers as he closed the bathroom door.

Oliver had been here before. This was not the first time he'd trespassed on the hospitality of friends to enjoy the simple pleasure of a shower. Still, there was a strange tightness not unlike nervousness in his chest as he disrobed and turned on the shower. Though he'd been invited, it still felt a little like an invasion of Felicity's privacy to be naked and surrounded by her things.

Which he was probably better off not thinking about.

Despite the little voice in his head that told him to, Oliver didn't rush through his shower. Hot water was a commodity that he had not fully appreciated when he'd had a proper place to live. The knowledge that it was mid-afternoon and the water tank would have plenty of time to restock the hot water before Felicity showered again kept him from feeling overly guilty about the indulgence.

By the time he shut off the water and stepped out of the shower the mirror was completely fogged over and he could smell what he was convinced was spaghetti. As he'd done often in the recent past, Oliver silently thanked providence - or his lucky stars - for driving him into Felicity's office that day two years ago. Like Diggle, she was someone that he'd never intended to rely on, and only now could admit that he couldn't do without.

That was especially true on days like today, when she gave him free reign of her shower and made sure he ate. Even if he knew that said kindnesses would come with an argument about his current living arrangements.

But Oliver didn't mind the argument. In fact, he found himself smiling as he exited the bathroom in a swirl of steam vapors.

"Spaghetti?" he inquired as he made his way to the kitchen.

"I made extra," Felicity answered without turning around. "So you'll have plenty to take with you. Ya know, since you don't have a kitchen."

Oliver barely managed to wipe the grin off his face before she threw a pointed glance at him over her shoulder. "Thank you."

He'd lost count of how many meals he'd shared with both Felicity and Digg over the years of long nights spent hunting criminals, but Oliver couldn't deny that it was a different experience when they were eating in a private home. He felt the same way every time he showed up at Digg's and Lyla, who had apparently unofficially moved in, insisted on making him something to eat. At first, it had made him feel a stab of guilt to realize just how little he really knew about his friends outside of their work, until he'd given himself a mental kick and decided to really get to know them. The process was a continual one, and sometimes it still struck him as oddly … intimate to find himself eating mostly home cooked meals in private residences, instead of fast food in the basement of an industrial building.

Intimate and sometimes awkward, but still pleasant. Having dinner together was something normal, non-crime fighting friends did.

Oliver took the bowl full of pasta that Felicity handed him and followed her over to her kitchen table, which she hastily cleared of spare computer parts and miscellaneous papers. He ignored her sheepish expression and mumbled apology about the mess, like he always did; in all the times that he'd been to her home, Felicity's kitchen table had always been half covered in stuff. Oliver didn't mind. He found it quite fascinating, in fact, to see all the things that cluttered the space. His eyes would dance over it all, curious about what the papers said and always getting stuck on the small mechanical pieces and computer chips as he tried to imagine what it would be like to see things the way Felicity did. It was easy for him to forget that she was wicked smart until he saw all the computer pieces that littered her home, or watched her rewire something in the lair; he would never know what it was like to understand something so completely, to be able to disassemble something so intricate without damaging all the tiny parts. Never mind putting it back together.

No, Oliver didn't mind the clutter and repeated clearing of table space. He relished the sight of such a messy space in the midst of Felicity's habitual neatness, and the evidence of her intelligence.

"Are they puzzles?" The words left his mouth without any authorization to do so, and Felicity gave him a confused glance as she dropped into one of the chairs. Oliver motioned to the computer parts with his chin as he followed her example. "Computers. Are they like puzzles to you?"

Felicity glanced up at the ceiling for a second and then shrugged her shoulders. "I guess you could say that. I started taking apart computers because I wanted to know what made them tick. I love seeing the exposed circuits and understanding what they do, seeing the memory cards and knowing that such a tiny thing can hold so much information."

She stopped herself before she hit full nerd speed, but Oliver didn't look bored. He was listening intently and spinning his fork in the middle of his spaghetti, the noodles catching and sliding up toward the handle.

"Why do you ask?"

"Just curious."

Felicity narrowed her eyes at him. "You're trying to get me talking about computers so I won't harp on you about living in the lair, aren't you?"

"I didn't hear any harping." Oliver kept his face perfectly smooth.

"Only because you were trying to cut me off at the pass. You know we can stop having this argument as soon as you listen to reason."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Oliver!" Felicity couldn't keep from rolling her eyes at him. Seriously, why did he insist on being so difficult? "You're sleeping on a cot. There's nowhere to shower, or do laundry, or cook a meal. It's an empty industrial building - nothing remotely close to a habitable abode."

One of Oliver's eyebrows arched. "Habitable abode?" he repeated.

"Oh shut up," she retorted, waving her empty fork through the air at him. "You can't keep staying there and you know it. It's just ridiculous. Digg and I both have spare bedrooms. It just makes sense, it's smart."

"I can't pay …"

"Money doesn't matter, Oliver."

_You do. _She didn't say it, but he heard it anyway.

"The spare bed is already made up and ready," Felicity continued. "You're staying here tonight, and then you can make a choice tomorrow. And don't bother fighting me on this."

"How did you know I'd come over today?" Oliver could feel a smile tugging at his mouth.

"I didn't. I've had the spare room ready since the last time you stopped by. Digg has too. You'd be having the same conversation with him right now if you'd shown up there instead." Felicity grinned smugly at him and popped a forkful of pasta into her mouth.

The smile finally broke over his face and he shook his head as he took a bite of spaghetti. Instead of worrying about all the ways the whole thing could go wrong, Oliver chose to be thankful.

Thankful and hopeful that, wherever she was, Thea had found her own Felicity and Diggle.


	3. Unless, of course, it is

_**Author's Note: I'm sorry for the delay guys. I've been pretty busy with classes and now that the year is winding down things are kicking into high gear. I had a midterm this week (that I needed to do well on, so fingers crossed) and several big papers/projects coming up. But no fear, I'm not giving up on this work! Thank you to everyone who has read/reviewed/favorited so far. **_

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Oliver clasped his hands over his head and stretched until his muscles burned. Whatever he might say to his friends, he didn't deny that it had been nice to wake up in a real bed. He lie there for some minutes after stretching, relishing the soft sheets and mattress beneath him. He had a habit of sleeping crooked so that his feet didn't hang over the edge of the bed, and he was surprised to see that he hadn't knocked any of the pillows off. Oliver was of the mind to tease Felicity about the necessity of having more than two pillows on a guest bed.

Excessive pillows or not, his body didn't ache as he pulled himself into a sitting position. A cot was better than a cement floor, but a bed was definitely better than a cot. Maybe his friends were right about living in the basement of an industrial building.

Oliver untangled himself from the sheets and crossed to the window. He pulled open the blinds and blinked against the onslaught of sunlight. The sky was a cloudless swathe of blue over the rooftops.

He turned to survey his surroundings in the morning light. The room was clean and sparsely decorated, which surprised him. There was a colorful, abstract painting on the wall across from the bed, and (unsurprisingly) a delicate rendering of computer schematics in thin, crisp lines. Oliver would have found the presence of two such pictures in the same room odd, if the house belonged to anyone other than Felicity. The darkest object in the room seemed to be his black duffel bag, which was tucked against the far wall.

Oliver was accosted with the smell of fresh coffee then, and he smiled. He normally woke early, but he must have slept in if Felicity was awake and making coffee. The thought that he was in her house – that he was going to walk out that door and find her in the other room – was a strange one for Oliver. Showering in her shower was odd enough, but to wake in the morning and know that she was going to be the first person he saw …

He pushed the thought away and retrieved a shirt. Felicity had seen him shirtless plenty of times, but the idea of walking around her house shirtless made him uncomfortable. This was not his space. Houseguests didn't just wander around half clothed.

Before his mind could conjure up an image of half naked people wandering around Felicity's home, Oliver pulled open the bedroom door and padded into the hallway.

Not surprisingly, he found Felicity at the kitchen table. She was still in pajamas – her pants were covered in large neon polka dots – and her hair hung loose around her shoulders. A cup of coffee sat on the table in front of her, little wisps of steam rising unchecked into the air. She hadn't seen him come in; one knee was pulled up to her chest and she was fiddling with some kind of computer chip.

Oliver had never seen her like that. In all the time that he'd known Felicity, he'd never seen her so relaxed. She looked … amazing; sweet, and innocent in a way that he didn't think he ever had been.

He didn't realize he'd stopped moving until he started toward her again. "What's that?" he asked.

"A RAM card," Felicity answered absently. "Since we might only have one computer for a while, I'm upgrading the memory." When she finally looked up at him she offered him a bright smile. "There's coffee, if you want some."

"Cups?"

"Cupboard above the coffee pot."

"Logical," Oliver muttered as he moved into the kitchen. He opened the cupboard in question and almost laughed: it was full of novelty mugs. The first one he saw proclaimed in huge black letters COFFEE OR DEATH. He started to reach for that one, until a bright red one caught his eye. When he read what it said, his mind was made up.

Felicity finished replacing the small RAM cards and then inspected her handiwork. She didn't look up until Oliver had taken a seat across from her. She was about to ask him how he'd slept when she realized what coffee mug he'd chosen; instead of words, all that came out of her mouth was a pleased laugh. The coffee mug stared back at her: INSTANT SUPERHERO JUST ADD COFFEE.

"Cute," Felicity finally managed to sputter. After she'd settled down again she asked, "So how did you sleep?"

"Good," Oliver answered. "Even if most of the bed was taken over by pillows. Why do you have so many?"

"There is no such thing as too many pillows," she countered.

"I think I almost suffocated."

"Oh don't be such a drama queen." Felicity's eyes lit up as she realized what she'd said, a wide grin splitting pale pink lips. "That was good."

"But not original," he teased. "I used to drive my sister crazy with that when we were younger. I even made it her nickname for a while, until she went crying to our mom."

The smile that had appeared only seconds before disappeared completely. He'd been thinking of his sister and how they'd nagged at each other growing up, but the moment he said the word mom those memories vanished. A great pit opened up in his chest, a gaping black hole that sucked all the air from his lungs and clawed at his heart. Just for that minute he'd forgotten that his mother was gone forever. In the space between the sound of his voice and the realization that she was gone, Moira Queen had been alive once again. Oliver was astounded by how fiercely he wanted it to be true, how desperately he wanted to call her just to hear her pick up on the other end.

That wasn't possible though, because his mother was dead. She'd never say his name again, or lecture him on being irresponsible, or even yell at Thea. Losing his father had been hard enough, but his mother … there was no one else on Earth that would love him the way his mother had. And for that tiny span of breath – a blink of an eye, a heartbeat – Oliver felt the desolation of it all in every corner of his soul.

"Oliver?"

He blinked; his lungs expanded as he took a breath; the world continued to turn. Felicity had leaned across the table to wrap a hand around the hand of his that lay on the tabletop. Her thumb brushed over his knuckles.

"I'm so sorry, Oliver."

Behind her glasses, Felicity's eyes were luminous and full of compassion. She did not pity him – Oliver knew what pity looked like – but the way she looked at him made him feel like he wasn't alone. Whatever she'd personally felt for his mother, Oliver didn't doubt for a second that she truly meant those words. Her sincerity didn't change the reality of the situation, but it helped. Felicity helped.

Oliver cleared his throat. Before she could withdraw her hand, he turned his up beneath hers so that their palms came together. He squeezed her hand and tried to smile, although he didn't feel very successful.

"Thank you," he said quietly. Then, as he watched her tiny hand draw back to her side, "So, big plans for today?"

"Well, that RAM card was the final improvement on the computer I've been building for the new lair. I'll bring it over later tonight and hook everything up and run some tests to make sure. And then we can move your stuff over?"

Oliver fixed his best deadpan expression on her. In a moment of absurdity and out of a genuine desire to cheer him up, Felicity responded by wiggling her eyebrows at him. She got the reaction she wanted: Oliver huffed out a chuckle, his shoulders falling forward as he shook his head in response.

"I don't think so," he said finally. "This is your home, and you need your space."

"Oliver," Felicity started, and he could see her winding up for the fight.

"But," he interjected before she could get up to speed, "If it bothers you that much, I'll let you buy me a bed."

Felicity narrowed her eyes. She wasn't thrilled about Oliver's refusal to stay with her – or Digg, for that matter – but it would make her feel better to know that he had a real bed, and not that dingy old cot. She could afford to buy him a bed, although that didn't solve the bathroom problem.

"Fine," she conceded. "But what about the bathroom?"

"There is a bathroom."

"Yes, but not a shower," Felicity countered. "Unless you plan on sponge bathing from the sink."

"Not exactly. If Digg will help me, I think we can tap into the existing water lines and build a shower."

Felicity just sighed. "If you say so." She pulled herself to her feet and carried her now empty coffee mug to the sink. "Come on then."

"What?"

Felicity waved a hand absentmindedly through the air. "Let's go change so we can find a bed."

Oliver finished his coffee quickly and did as he was bid. On his way out of the kitchen he heard her mutter behind him, "That didn't sound as dirty in my head."

He sincerely hoped that Felicity never changed.


	4. The Shower Solution

_**Author's Note: So not only did this chapter basically write itself, it's also pretty much pure fluff. Because apparently that's what my poor little soul needed after this week's episode. Truthfully, I'm a little worried that some of this might seem out of character - I hope not, because I really just needed to give our babies a happy moment (and also because writing this just came so naturally). Let me know what you think.**_

_**Secondary AN: I've re-uploaded this chapter with a few corrections. I read through it and found some mistakes in the tense. Sorry about that, but it should be good to go now.**_

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By the end of the week, Felicity could no longer argue with Oliver over the lack of a place to shower. She'd known that they'd already started the project, because she and Digg had split the cost of the building materials. Oliver had tried to object, of course, but Digg had joked about it being a housewarming gift and Felicity had simply ignored him. A place to shower was a necessity, she'd said, and then promptly paid the cashier.

Still, Felicity was surprised when she turned up at the lair on Friday and discovered Digg and Oliver standing in the middle of a finished bathroom, admiring their handiwork with smiles that bordered on gloating. She was about to ask if Digg had experience with this sort of thing when she found herself distracted by the realization that Oliver was shirtless and covered in a fine layer of wood shavings. Why was it that no matter how many times she saw Oliver half dressed, the sight still derailed her? This is getting ridiculous, she chided herself. Get over it, Smoak.

"Does it work?" She didn't remember what else she was going to say.

Digg scoffed in reply. "Of course it works."

Oliver grinned and leaned forward to turn on the faucet. The pipes whined and chugged loudly, and then water went spitting out of the showerhead like a mini explosion. Felicity yelped and hopped backward, out of the spray, and Digg managed to get away with little more than a wet sleeve. Oliver, on the other hand, was on the receiving end of an impromptu shower. He scrambled to turn off the water, but by the time he managed it he was thoroughly soaked.

Shocked, Oliver blinked hard several times to clear the water from his eyes. He looked at his friends between the rivulets of water that ran out of his hair and down his face. Neither of them seemed to know what to do.

Then, Felicity started laughing. There was no build up, no quiet chuckling or increasingly frantic giggles; one minute she was gaping at him, and the next she was clutching her sides and gasping for air. Diggle's laughter wasn't far behind. Oliver glared daggers at both of them.

"You look like a drowned cat!" Felicity crowed.

Diggle had been trying to laugh quietly, but at Felicity's comparison his shoulders started to shake from the effort.

"I think I have to sit down," she sputtered.

Oliver flicked water at her in response.

Felicity had only been seated a few seconds before Digg joined her. He was still smiling, and it made her enjoy the moment all the more. The three of them had passed many days without a single smile between them in the last few years, so she never failed to appreciate the lighter times. There was no way of knowing when the next one would come.

"How's Lyla?" Felicity questioned as she fiddled with her computer.

"Good," Digg answered a little evasively.

The pipes whined and gurgled again, although it was quieter this time. Felicity chuckled. Oliver had obviously decided to take a proper shower.

"Everything okay between you two?" She prodded.

Digg nodded and smiled. "Yeah. We're good."

"I'm glad."

Felicity had purposely chosen to wear pants instead of a dress today. She was putting the final touches on the computer system, and had anticipated having to repeatedly crawl under her desk to fiddle with cables.

Digg excused himself. He had supplied his own tools for the shower project and set about collecting those that weren't sequestered in the bathroom with Oliver. They'd lucked out on not having to knock down any walls to extend the room. Glancing around at the walls and ceiling, Digg admitted that they probably wouldn't have been able to do that anyway. Every wall and support beam in the place was made of concrete, and that was beyond his skill.

Felicity had brought a portable speaker with her. Work – and life – was better with music. She plugged the auxiliary cable in to her phone and then chose a playlist at random. When she was satisfied that the song was upbeat enough for her mood, she turned up the volume and then proceeded to crawl under the desk.

Computers had always been comforting to Felicity. She understood how they worked and how to fix them, or make them better. There were small differences in the brands, but for the most part she knew they were all the same. Some of the hardest and darkest times of her life had been endured with the help of computers and modern technology. Those things made sense to her in ways that her fellow man never had.

She triple checked that the cooling fan was working properly while she was down there. Knowing that she only had one computer to work with made Felicity nervous, and it wasn't exactly the newest model. Still, everything seemed to be working to her standards, so she popped out from beneath the desk and into her chair.

Behind her, Digg took a minute to glance around at their new lair. He hadn't realized before how comfortable he'd been in the basement of that nightclub. Now, he found it strange not to see things in the places he expected them to be. They'd kept the layout the same to make it easier to get used to, but the differences were there. The most notable of which was the pronounced lack of bass infused music coming from the floor above them. At any rate, the place was finally starting to look – and feel – functional.

It's a new beginning, Lyla's voice said in his head. Only she'd been talking about a different thing, and that only reminded him that he really needed to talk to his friends.

"Yes!" Felicity exclaimed suddenly, punctuating the word with a triumphant fist pump.

"Good news?" Oliver queried. He'd emerged from the bathroom in clean, dry clothes, and was making his way toward her.

A blonde ponytail whipped through the air as Felicity spun her chair around to face him. "We're in, baby!"

Oliver almost tripped over his own feet. The words were just an expression, a colloquialism, but it caught him off guard. A heartbeat passed in which a very irrational part of Oliver was convinced that Felicity had just called him baby.

Then her ivory cheeks went pink and her eyes widened. "I mean … I wasn't calling you baby, that's not what I meant …"

Oliver quickly covered his surprise. "I know," he assured her. "I'm assuming the computer system is up and running?"

"Like Lindsay Tate."

His brow furrowed as he joined her at the desk. "Lindsay Tate?"

"Star of the college track team," Felicity explained. "Four years in a row."

"And you remember that?" Digg teased, moving to stand on the other side of her.

"Only because we were roommates." Felicity spun her chair back to the computer. With a few deft keystrokes she'd opened all of the programs they routinely used to track targets. She pinged Oliver's cell to demonstrate that it worked, and then started scanning the police department's frequency for chatter. "It's not as fast as I'd like, but it'll get the job done until we can get a few more computers together."

"Do you have the parts to build another one? Or rebuild one?" Digg asked.

"Unfortunately, no. Which reminds me – I have a job again."

"You make that sound like a bad thing."

"Think more 'soul crushing'."

"Where?" Oliver prompted.

"A tech shop, of all places. I'm way overqualified for the position."

"Then why did you take the position?" Digg challenged.

"Because I'm bored. And I'll make enough to pay my bills, and with the employee discount I'll be able to get my hands on plenty of computer parts to get this place up to par. Besides, it's not like it's forever."

The former bodyguard shrugged a shoulder in agreement. "Fair enough."

"What about you? Got any prospects lined up, or are you enjoying being a kept man?" Felicity teased.

Digg sighed and then straightened his shoulders. Now was as good a time as any, he figured. "That's about to change, actually. There's something I've been meaning to tell you guys."

That definitely had their attention. Oliver put a hand on the back of Felicity's chair, just behind her head, and they both looked at him expectantly.

"Lyla is pregnant. I'm gonna be a dad."

Felicity processed his words first. She flung herself out of the chair and straight into him, hugging him as tightly as she could. When she pulled away she gave him a sound kiss on the cheek. Then she clapped excitedly.

"I'm so happy for you, John! That's the best news ever! Do you know the sex yet? Have you picked names?"

"Breathe, Felicity," Oliver instructed, but he was grinning broadly as he shook the other man's hand vigorously. "That's great news, man. I'm happy for you."

Digg released the breath he'd been holding. The news had been a surprise for him as well, and though he'd recovered from the initial shock, it was still odd to say the words aloud. In a lot of ways, it still didn't seem real. He was going to be a father. Sharing the news went a long way on that front though.

He was also relieved by Oliver and Felicity's reactions. Digg hadn't known what sort of response to expect; it had been just the three of them for the better part of two years, and a baby would change all of that. He'd hoped that his team would be happy for him, of course, but hope was a fickle weapon against worry. A weight had been lifted off of his shoulders today.

Felicity shot several more rapid-fire questions at Digg. Oliver used the distraction to slip away under the pretense of giving the new bathroom a final going over. What he was really doing was giving himself a minute to process everything: Diggle was going to be a father. Oliver knew that his friend was going to make a terrific parent, and that any child born to him would count themselves lucky.

What would that sort of life be like, he wondered. What would it feel like to be a normal person – someone other than the man he was – and have a family? Try as he might, Oliver couldn't imagine a life like that for himself. Instead of a white picket fence, he saw cement walls; instead of a loving wife, he saw a twin bed in a basement and a green hood.

_We're in, baby! _He'd been ridiculous to think for even the tiniest second that Felicity was talking to him. In the first place, he doubted that Felicity was the type for pet names, and he certainly wasn't; in the second place, if Felicity ever did attach any term of endearment to anyone, it wouldn't be him. That wasn't in the cards for them; well, mostly for him.

Was it?

Did he want it to be?

In his mind's eye, Oliver saw Felicity as she had been that morning he'd woken up in her house: fresh faced and relaxed, computer parts in hand and a steaming cup of coffee in front of her.

He pushed the image away abruptly. He was not a normal man, or a good one, and Felicity deserved both of those things. Oliver only wanted the best for her, and that couldn't be him, whether he wanted it to be or not.

Which he didn't; of course he didn't. That would be ridiculous.

"Hey, man," Digg called out then, pulling Oliver from his thoughts. "I'm gonna head out for the night, if you don't need me."

Oliver met him at the bottom of the stairs and gave him another warm handshake. "Have a good night, Digg. And tell Lyla congratulations for me."

"Let's have a celebration dinner!" Felicity half yelled from her chair. "My treat! We can get dressed up and go out on the town, like normal people. In fact, I won't take no for answer."

Diggle chuckled dryly and glanced at Oliver. "We didn't even get a chance to argue."

"I heard that," Felicity glared at them. "Tell Lyla she gets to pick the restaurant."

"And when can we expect this mandatory night out to take place?"

"Next Saturday?" When neither of them objected, Felicity nodded decisively. "Next Saturday it is. But if she picks somewhere really fancy I'll need a few days to make a reservation. Now, shoo."

It was Oliver's turn to chuckle. Digg shot their female a friend a pointed look and then made his way up the stairs, mumbling all the way about women being taught to shoo in the womb.

"Dinner, huh?" Oliver said as he rejoined her at the computer station.

"Dinner," Felicity affirmed. "I haven't had a chance to dress up in a while, and before we know it Lyla won't have the chance."

"I hate to rain on your parade, Felicity, but …"

"Oh no you don't. I already said it'd be my treat. It'll be like a date … only with four of us." She pursed her lips and her brow furrowed as she thought about her words. "Did I just make us sound like polygamists?"

Oliver tipped his head to the side and studied her face. Sometimes he really wished he knew how her brain worked. "I think the word you're looking for is double date."

Felicity's expression brightened visibly. "That's it! Only … well, not a double date exactly, since you and I aren't actually a couple … not that … you know what, I'm just gonna stop there."

She huffed in irritation and turned her attention back to the computer. There had to be some cultures in the world where she would qualify as having an actual disability.

Beside her, Oliver made no reply; he was too busy realizing, with no small amount of trepidation, that the dropping sensation he'd felt in his chest at Felicity's denial of their double date status seemed an awful lot like disappointment.

Later that night, when he went to sleep in the bed that Felicity had bought him, Oliver dreamt that he was standing by a lake. Felicity was there with him, but every time he tried to talk to her she got farther away, until they stood on opposite sides of the shore. She kept saying his name and asking him for something, but he couldn't make sense enough of her words to know what it was.


	5. It's Mafia, not Mob

_**Author's Note: Hey guys! So I've had this chapter mostly written for about a week, but it still needed some editing and then when I sat down to do that I ended up deciding it needed to be a little longer. Oops. As a reminder, this story is set in the hiatus between seasons 2 and 3. I've decided that I'm going to keep a few things canon has given us so far (like the bed), but for the most part I'll probably be ignoring the rest. So if you were confused at all, I hope that clears things up a bit. Anyway, read on, and leave a review if you'd be so kind. They mean a lot, and really make my day. Oh, and happy Thursday!**_

* * *

Felicity remembered very quickly why she hated working in retail: people were, generally speaking, idiots. Also, she had not graduated from MIT – with honors, no less – to spend eight hours a day repeating the sentence "did you turn it off and then on again". The words literally hurt her soul.

Then again, it was nice to know that she had a revolving income again. Her savings account was still in fairly good shape, but she worried less knowing that she wasn't relying on it completely. And it was easier to keep up on the latest technology releases when she had nearly every one at the tips of her fingers. Besides, it wasn't forever; just until she found a position she was really suited for.

There was no denying that life had certainly taken a strange turn for Felicity. In the last two years she'd gone from being a nobody IT tech at a fortune 500 company, to being an Executive Assistant for her CEO slash vigilante boss, to being a retail store worker. That wasn't even touching on the whole "Hurricane Slade" ordeal, or any of the other ordeals they'd either endured or averted in the course of their less than legal activities.

Her iPod chose that moment to switch songs and the words "Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy" filled the confines of her car.

"Oh, now that's just ridiculous," Felicity growled, but she turned up the volume anyway. Apparently now even inanimate objects liked to give her grief over the strange state of her life.

She was on her way to the lair for the night. Oliver had his eye on the leader of a weapons trafficking ring that had popped up in the city over the last month or so. The mission was pretty straightforward in her opinion – it hadn't taken her long to get enough off of a closed circuit security camera to identify the guy – but Felicity was grateful for that. Cleaning up Starling City was what they did, but it was nice to think they were getting a bit of a break while they tried to recover from the last few months.

They weren't doing too terrible on that front, though. The lair was mostly built up and on par with their expectations again, although Felicity's computer system still left a little to be desired. She was going to fix that tonight – she'd finally just bitten the bullet and used some of her paycheck and a chunk of savings to buy what she needed. Originally she'd planned to just rebuild another computer and upgrade the system bit by bit, but then it had occurred to her that the option wasn't really a viable one. Digg and Oliver relied on her computers, and the machines absolutely had to be able to do what she asked them to do.

Felicity parked in her (new) usual spot. The new building had a delivery bay and loading dock in the back that Oliver and Digg had retrofitted with a ramp large enough to drive a vehicle up, and they'd turned it into a sort of secret garage. The room was large enough to fit all of their vehicles and a few of Oliver's mysterious trunks, which lined one of the back walls. Felicity had wired the security system herself, with a little help from the boys for some of the trickier parts, and patched it into the lair.

Felicity gathered up what she could manage to carry on her own. She'd have to ask for help and come back for the rest of it. The walk wasn't terrible until she got to the door and had to punch in the security code, which was difficult to do with an armful of computer parts that she absolutely could not afford to drop. She finally managed to finagle the code, and then sighed in irritation when she realized the door was too heavy to open with the two fingers she could spare.

"Clearly, I did not think this through," she muttered.

"You look ridiculous."

Felicity startled. When she turned to glance over her shoulder (and the pile of stuff in her arms), it was to find Roy Harper standing behind her with folded arms and raised eyebrows.

"Such a charmer," Felicity deadpanned. "Give me a hand?"

"No, I thought I'd just stand here and watch you struggle," Roy answered.

"Isn't that what you're doing right now?"

Roy shook his head and stepped forward. He had to reenter the code before he could hold the door open for her.

"Thanks," she huffed. She was already eyeing the flight of stairs and trying to decide the best way to navigate them when one of Roy's arms snaked in front of her face and pulled away half of her wares.

"You really thought I wouldn't help you carry this crap?" he asked, and he almost sounded offended.

Felicity just shrugged. Though Roy was now considered a full-fledged member of the team, she didn't think she'd gotten the full measure of him yet. They were friendly with each other for the most part, but their relationship seemed to be built on a foundation of sass. Roy also appeared to have the same penchant for stoicism that Oliver had; he shared little of himself beyond the work that they did. Privately, Felicity wondered if part of that didn't have to do with the fact that their new teammate was still pining over the voluntary disappearance of his girlfriend. Roy rarely mentioned Thea, but she never failed to notice the way he reacted whenever Oliver mentioned his sister.

As they made their way down the stairs together, Felicity decided that if Diggle was like her big brother, then Roy was like her little brother. What a strange little vigilante family we've built, she mused.

The only one she couldn't properly place was Oliver. He certainly wasn't her brother. He was her friend, and her partner, but beyond that … she didn't know. They were more than nothing, but less than something – if that was possible. Sometimes she thought there was something there, skirting the edge of possibility, but she wasn't sure what it was. Felicity did her best not to, but every once in awhile she remembered a moment in the shadows of an abandoned mansion and a half whispered confession of love. The memory never got to stay more than a few seconds before she pushed it away, though. His words had been a ploy to catch a madman and nothing more.

Still, Felicity would probably never be able to forget what it sounded like to hear Oliver say those words: I love you. Once or twice, she'd caught him looking at her in a way that made her feel like he hadn't forgotten either – but that didn't bear thinking about.

"Did Hanukah come early this year?" Digg called out then.

"Hanukah?" Roy repeated.

"I'm Jewish," Felicity supplied. "You can just set it down on the table." She turned to see Digg and Oliver on the sparring mats, each one with a long staff in one hand. They were shirtless, of course, because at least one of them seemed to be allergic to being fully clothed. "I bit the bullet and picked up all the stuff for the computer system. I figure that we'll need them, if we're gonna get back into the swing of things."

"I thought you were trying to save money?" Digg challenged.

"I am, but this is kind of a necessity. Speaking of which, could one of you give me a hand bringing in the rest from my car?"

"There's more?" Roy asked incredulously. "How much of this crap do you need?"

"Hey!" Felicity groused, pointing an angry finger at him. "Do not call my babies 'crap'. They save lives, thank you very much, and they're worth more than at least half of the people I've met."

Roy held up both hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, sorry." One of the corners of his mouth turned up in a half smile. "Are you always this weird?"

Felicity tried to glare at him, but she recognized the teasing note at the end of his question. "Ugh, you're gonna be like the little brother I never wanted, aren't you?"

She was surprised to realize that Oliver was laughing quietly. "I'll help you, Felicity." He handed his staff of to Diggle and retrieved his shirt from where he'd tossed it earlier. "You two sound like Thea and me when we were kids."

Predictably, the half smile disappeared from Roy's face. He stepped away from her without a word, presumably to get outfitted for the night. Oliver had surprised them all by declaring Roy ready for what she called "field work".

Felicity waited until she and Oliver were partway up the stairs to quietly say, "I think Roy is a little heartbroken."

Oliver did not seem surprised by her statement. He pushed the door open for her and then followed her out into the alleyway and toward the garage without a word.

"I know you weren't crazy about their relationship, Oliver, but Roy really misses Thea."

The answer Oliver gave her was not the one she expected. "So do I."

Three small words, uttered so innocently, were a powerful reminder for Felicity of all the things the man next to her had endured. His mother was dead and now his only sister was halfway across the world, effectively leaving him completely alone. The realization was so heavy – so painful, and it wasn't even her life – that Felicity couldn't take it. She reached for him, catching his forearm with one hand and pulling them to a stop.

"Hey," she said. "I'm sorry." She was apologizing for so much that she didn't know how to qualify it. She was sorry for what life had put him through, and kept putting him through; she was sorry for all of the things he'd lost, and all the things she couldn't fix, and the complete inability of such small words to express how deeply she really meant them. She squeezed his arm comfortingly. "Of course you miss her. I wasn't trying to imply otherwise. But you're not alone, and neither is Roy. We might be a family of misfits, but we're still a family."

Oliver reached over to cover the hand that she'd placed on his arm with his own. Felicity's expression was so open, so sincere, that it made him smile a little. A family of misfits, she had called them, and Oliver liked the title.

He liked knowing that this life they had built meant so much to her. "I know," he assured her. "And if anyone can make him see that, it's you."

Felicity felt rooted to the ground. Oliver had clearly let his guard down, and the way he was looking at her made it hard to breathe. She didn't know when the action had started, but she was suddenly very aware of the way Oliver's thumb was brushing over her knuckles. The shiver that shot down her spine was completely involuntary.

Oliver attributed it to the chill night air. "Let's go get the rest of your stuff," he said, breaking their contact and resuming the trek to the garage.

Felicity sucked in a breath until her lungs burned and then fell into step beside him again. "Are you sure Roy's ready to be out there with you guys?" she asked after a while.

"He'll be fine," Oliver answered. They had reached Felicity's mini Cooper. He crossed to the passenger door and waited for her to load his arms with computer parts. "You said yourself this should be a routine bust, and Digg and I will be there to bail him out if something goes wrong."

Felicity sighed. "I know. But you know I'm a worrier. With good cause, I might add. It was bad enough with just two of you. The three of you are gonna give me an ulcer before the year is out, I just know it."

The end of her sentence was distorted as she leaned into her passenger seat to gather a handful of loose cords, a large monitor, and a hard drive. When she righted herself, she handed the pile over to him without actually looking at him; she was looking for something.

"Did I already take in the other hard drive? Never mind." She swept what was left into her own empty arms and then pushed the car door closed with one of her hips.

"This stuff looks expensive, Felicity," Oliver chided as they made their way back toward the lair.

"It was," she answered nonchalantly. "But it has to be the best if I'm gonna cover your ass." Oliver was already smiling when she realized her mistake. "No! Not cover your ass … not literally cover, like … I wasn't coming on to you, I wouldn't … well, I …"

Oliver was laughing at her. Well, he was grinning – actually grinning – and chuckling quietly as she dug herself in deeper.

"Feel free to jump in at any time," Felicity snapped dryly. "Help me save even a shred of dignity."

"Why would I do that?"

Felicity tried to glare at him, but it was almost impossible to do in the face of such lightness from him. Oliver was happy, or showed his happiness, so rarely. More than that, he seemed to be teasing her – which was odd, because he rarely teased anyone.

"Because it's the nice thing to do?" she supplied.

"Ah," he breathed, entering the code and holding the door open for her again. "I must not be that nice," he murmured as she stepped past him.

The words were a jest, and Felicity knew that, but there was something about the way he said them. His voice dropped a little at the end, as though he was sharing a secret with her, and fixed her with a gaze that was a little too dark to be innocent. The look was sort of predatory, but in a way that made heart flutter.

Was Oliver flirting with her?

The moment passed when she heard Roy say, "I am not helping you set those up."

Her heartbeat was a little too erratic for her liking when Felicity responded. "Good thing I didn't ask you to, then." She and Oliver descended the stairs and deposited their bundles next to their counterparts on her workstation.

Roy had changed into his red leather ensemble. Seeing him in it only served to remind Felicity that he really was a part of their team now, and she started to worry all over again. Oliver and Digg had spent years learning how to work together and rely on one another out there; how was Roy going to fit in to the mix? What if he messed up? Or worse, lost his temper, or panicked? The list of things that could go wrong was so long that it gave her a headache just thinking about it.

She couldn't do much in the field, but she could be certain that any and all of their technological and support needs were taken of.

"Actually," Felicity segued, glancing at all three of them. "I'm gonna need your help."

"What did I just say?" Roy retorted.

"I don't remember," Felicity shot back, meeting his sass with her own.

"All right, children," Digg interrupted, already looking exasperated. "Fight nice."

"Seriously though," she continued, serious again. "If any of you thinks I'm going to let you leave this lair without a properly working computer system, then you could not be more wrong."

Oliver raised an eyebrow, but it was Roy who spoke up. Which did not surprise Felicity one bit. "Seriously? What difference does it make?"

Oliver knew that the other man had irked her when Felicity barreled into his personal space like a wildcat on the hunt. He would have found it funny, if Roy hadn't looked so thoroughly confused.

"The difference is that it's my job to make sure that you're covered out there. Whether that's unlocking doors or hacking security cameras or saving your ass from the police, or whatever else you need. I can't do that if my computers can't keep up with what I need them to do, and I'll be damned if I let you go out there without my support. This team is a family, and that makes you family too." She punctuated the words by poking him in the chest with a finger. "And my family comes home when the mission is done."

The lair was silent for almost a full minute. Now that her rant was over, Felicity felt a little embarrassed for her words; she hadn't meant to come down on him so hard, but it rankled her that Roy either didn't see the importance of what she did for the team, or shared Oliver's disturbing lack of a sense of self-preservation. Still, the words had gotten away from her a little, and she could feel the blush creeping up her neck and spreading over her cheeks.

"When you say family, do you mean like a mob family? Because I kind of feel like I just got yelled at by the Godfather. Well, Godmother." Roy finished the sentence with a crooked smile.

For a second, Felicity just gaped at him. Then the sharp bark of deep laughter startled her: Oliver had started to laugh, and Digg quickly joined him. Though her face was on fire, she joined in after a second. That had not been the response she expected, but it was pretty funny.

"Sorry," Felicity managed to huff after a minute. "I get kind of intense sometimes."

"Whatever you say, Godmother."

"Oh, shut up and give me a hand with the damn computers."

She couldn't entirely regret the rant, though, because after that Roy's attitude seemed to lighten a little. Everyone needed to know they belonged somewhere, Felicity thought, and that their presence was noticed.

"I think we should just pick new aliases," Roy said with perfect calmness. "How do you think Detective Lance would like calling Oliver the Godfather from now on?"

"The Godfather?" Oliver repeated.

"Well, you're kind of the ring leader of this 'family'," and Roy made a face at Felicity when he said the word. "And Felicity's obviously the mob mama."

"I think I preferred 'Godmother'. It sounds more …"

"Terrifying?" Diggle supplied.

"Sure, if you mean like being chased by a Chihuahua," Roy quipped.

"Dignified," Felicity said simultaneously. She glared at Roy. "I will hurt you."

He shrugged. "The mob takes care of their own, right?"

"This is the most ridiculous conversation I've ever had."

Oliver directed a very pointed look at her. "Somehow I doubt that."

"Well," she hedged. "It's pretty high up on the list."

Between them, they managed to get the system up and purring like a kitten in short time. Felicity had to stop what she was doing more than once to double check that her friends were doing things correctly, because the computers really were her babies and she was nothing if not a paranoid parent. The only reason she was letting them help at all was because she knew they wanted to get out in the field sometime before tomorrow morning.

When Felicity was satisfied with her new set up, her counterparts gathered their equipment and headed for the stairs. She followed them to the stairs, wringing her hands anxiously as she listened to them outline their action plan one last time. Roy sounded confident and in control, but Felicity knew that it was one thing to be that way in the safe confines of the lair, and another to be that way when staring down thugs and criminals. Granted, Oliver and Digg would be there with him and they had plenty of experience with this sort of thing, but still. She worried. She made an Olympic sport out of worrying.

Felicity added chewing on the corner of her bottom lip to wringing her hands.

"Felicity."

Her little mafia family – damn Roy for putting that thought in her head! – had stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Roy was standing a few stairs up, his hand on the railing as he looked over his shoulder at her; Digg was smiling reassuringly, which did help her nerves a little; and Oliver had fixed alert, serious eyes on her face.

"We'll be fine," Oliver told her quietly.

She nodded once, quickly. "I know that. Of course you will be. I'm not nervous, I'm just …"

"Nervous?" Digg finished for her.

"Ridiculous," Felicity puffed. "I'm ridiculous. Now get out of here already."

In an effort to hide her nervousness, Felicity waved her hands through the air in front of her in a shooing motion. Roy turned and resumed his trek up the stairs and Digg winked at her, but Oliver took a step forward and snatched one of her hands out of the air. He gave it a gentle squeeze and tipped his chin down to catch her gaze.

"Hey. We'll be okay."

Felicity answered his gentle squeeze with one of her own and pressed her lips into a thin line before answering. "I know. Now go, clean up the city."

The upstairs door had no sooner closed than Felicity zipped across the room to her computers and brought up all of the traffic cameras that covered their path of travel. She slid the Bluetooth in her ear and started scrambling the frequency.

"Digg?"

"Loud and clear."

Felicity patched into Roy's frequency. "Roy?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

She flipped to the last one. "Oliver?" The engine of his motorcycle was a quiet growl in her ear.

"The others?" he asked by way of an answer.

"Ready and waiting."

Felicity joined the open frequencies into one channel to the sound of a motorcycle engine revving up.

Then, Oliver's voice carried over the background noise. "Talk to me, Felicity."

The chase was on. Her fingers whisked over the keyboard as she directed them through the streets and toward the target. Digg and Roy broke off as they got closer to take up tactical positions, and Felicity relayed information to them as it came in. The computer genius always enjoyed this part of their job: they operated as smoothly and efficiently as the best computer system, and she took pride in that. Her team had the information as soon as she did.

Felicity lost visual contact with them just outside the perimeter of the condemned meat packing plant the weapons traffickers were using as a base of operations. She made a disgusted face as she pictured what such a building would look like on the inside.

"I've lost visual," she informed them. A few hurried keystrokes and then, "I can't turn it on remotely. It might be damaged."

This was the part Felicity didn't like. Without a security or recording system to hack into, she was blind. She studied the building's blueprints to pinpoint any likely hideouts or prime scouting positions. Their past missions had taught her to scan the duct system and main power wiring schematics as well.

The wordless chorus of grunts and muffled hits and twanging bowstrings was not unlike her personal symphony. Felicity was never certain if it was more stressful or comforting to listen to: on one hand, she felt like she was sitting through some twisted horror movie that had gone all out on sound effects and forgotten to actually film any scenes; on the other hand, the steady rhythm of the sounds and their continued presence reassured her that things were going as they should.

The eventual gunfire and shouting were expected, but they filled Felicity with dread. She drummed her fingers nervously against the tabletop. The report of Digg's gun as he returned fire was sharp over the communication line; two bowstrings whistled alternating tunes, Oliver's moving faster than Roy's.

Nearly twenty minutes after Felicity lost sight of her team – not that she was counting – Oliver's voice rang clearly over the line.

"Tell Detective Lance we've left him a present."

Felicity let out a relieved breath. "I feel like Santa. Or maybe one of his elves. Not the Will Ferrell kind, though, because that's too much, even for me."

Just before she opened another frequency to call the detective she heard Roy mutter, "You are so strange."

"Buddy, you have no idea," Felicity muttered.

"Buddy?" A new voice repeated. "Are you talking to me?"

"Detective Lance! No, sorry, that wasn't aimed at you."

"What can I do for you?" He didn't use her name, but the slight emphasis he put on the last word assured Felicity that he knew whom he was talking to.

"Christmas has come early, Detective."

Digg, Roy, and Oliver stayed with their apprehended thugs until Felicity told them the cops had passed over the outer perimeter of the building. She followed their separate routes home on the traffic cameras until they were a few blocks away, and then set about closing down the long list of operations her computers had been running. Felicity keyed in several new commands for self-diagnostics, system performance checks and remote security measures to run over the next half hour or so. She didn't shut down their communication link until the growl of Oliver's motorcycle went silent in her ear.

Three sets of footsteps pounded loudly down the stairs not long after. Felicity turned her chair to face them, smiling as they came into view.

"Limbs?" she called.

"Intact," Digg responded.

"Wounds?"

"Negative."

Felicity clapped her hands together happily and sprang out of her chair to join them as they de-weaponized themselves.

"Did you just inventory us?" Roy deadpanned.

Felicity glared at him.

"I've joined a mob." He sounded somewhat horrified.

"Mafia," Felicity and Digg corrected simultaneously.

Oliver had no idea that he was going to speak until the words had left his mouth. "Welcome to the family."

Felicity grinned at Oliver over her shoulder and then turned the grin on Roy. Then, she leaned toward him and stage whispered, "No getting out now."


	6. Pillow Talk

**_Author's Note: Well, this update came out a whole lot faster than I thought it would. I'd warn against getting used to it, though - a very rare thing happened today, in which I could actually afford to spend the entire day spitting out a nearly six thousand word chapter. I thought about holding on to this for a few days until I was at least halfway through the next chapter but, alas, I'm a horribly impatient person at heart. I want to share it, and I want to hear what you think of it! What do you say - leave a review?_**

* * *

Oliver was lying on his back, both arms behind his head, and staring at the ceiling. The lair was quiet around him. In a way, he missed the dull thumping beat that used to carry through the floor of Verdant. He had a healthy appreciation for silence, but occasionally he wished for the lull of steady sound. Oliver had never needed sound to sleep when he was younger, but he had grown accustomed to the sounds of nightlife on Lian Yu. Gentle breezes, the muted plop of rainfall against the fuselage of the plane, distant noises of birds and frogs; he didn't know how much he'd liked hearing those things until he'd rejoined civilization. He preferred those sounds to the ones that used to float down from the club, but even those had been soothing in their own way.

In another corner of the room, a soft whirring sound suddenly kicked on. Oliver recognized the sound as coming from the computer servers, which had kicked into a higher gear. He concentrated on the sound for a while. The smoothness of it was comforting. Apparently not comforting enough to help him fall asleep, though.

Oliver turned over onto his stomach and tucked his cheek against the pillow. Of its own volition, his mind supplied the memory of the guest bed in Felicity's townhouse and her surplus of pillows. Even when he was a billionaire he'd never slept with that many, but he couldn't discount how well he'd slept that night. His bed – which had been a gift from Felicity, so in a way it was like he was still sleeping in her bed – was too small for more than two. Not that he owned that many pillows anyway. Oliver suddenly found himself wondering how many pillows Felicity slept with. There would probably be at least two, because everyone had at least two pillows on their bed. Unless, like him, they didn't have room.

Yes, Felicity would have at least two pillows, he decided. Oliver thought about his bed at the mansion, and Thea's, and then changed that number to four: two pairs of two, a set for either side of the bed. For some reason, he imagined that she probably slept with two under her head, or one under her head and one against the headboard; the other two she'd either kick off the bed completely, or tuck around herself. Maybe she slept with one between her knees, like he'd seen Thea do sometimes.

Oliver took a deep breath, held it, and then blew it out quickly. Was he seriously lying in bed and trying to imagine how Felicity slept? That was … new. In his twenty- nine years of life, Oliver had thought about countless women in bed, but never to wonder how they slept with their pillows. He lifted his cheek off his own pillow and buried his nose in it instead, tucking both of his arms beneath it. The curiosity was innocent, he told himself; now that he had seen the majority of the place she called home, it was only natural that he should be curious about the rest of it. In all the times that Oliver had temporarily commandeered her shower, and the night he'd stayed over, he had never seen Felicity's bedroom. He knew where it was – the room at the end of the hall, maybe four feet from the guest bedroom – and he didn't remember the door being closed when he was there. Oliver was a private person, though, and the thought had never occurred to him to peek into the room. In fact, he hadn't thought to be curious about it then, and he had no idea why he was curious about it now.

He inhaled a nose full of pillowcase. Oh right, he thought sardonically. The Great Pillow Shortage. Oliver didn't know whether to laugh or mutter a curse when he realized it had been Felicity's voice in his head saying those words.

Truthfully, something had felt different ever since the whole debacle with Slade. Not outwardly different, although that was true as well, but inwardly. Something in his chest felt like it had shifted. A stone wasn't the right approximation for it, but it was the only thing that came to mind. Oliver felt like a stone had rolled over in his chest. Maybe fell was a more appropriate description: like it had fallen off the edge of a precipice, only to land in a depression that had been made for it. His mom would have called it "falling into place". Oliver had heard her use the words with his sister once. He chose not to ruminate on the fact that he thought he remembered the conversation having to do with Roy.

So something within him had changed, but something outside of him had changed as well. Actually, a few things had changed outside of him. Despite the somewhat messy situation they were in tactically speaking, with the work that went in to building a new lair from the ground up, things seemed to be going rather well for the team. Digg and Lyla were expecting a baby, which was still just … mind boggling for Oliver. Roy had made a lot of progress as well, and their first mission had gone off surprisingly well. The kid seemed to be learning how to move within a team setting, and how to interact with all of them. Oliver was hopeful that he'd continue to improve. He could already see the difference that it made in Roy's attitude to know that he was an accepted member of the team. Or family, as it had apparently been decided.

Just like that his thoughts circled back to Felicity. The revolution was effortless. One minute he was thinking of his sister's ex-boyfriend, and the next that thought had morphed into one of a certain petite blonde. In his mind's eye, Oliver saw Felicity as she had been in the alley a few nights ago. He recalled her eyes, wide and luminous even in the near darkness, and the press of her slim fingers against his arm. There was sincerity in her that he rarely saw from anyone else; maybe Thea, when she had been younger and less jaded.

The vision of her in the alley bled into another one: Felicity, arms full of computer hardware as she moved past him and through the door. Oliver had flirted with her on impulse. They had flirted before – at least, there had been moments that certainly felt flirtatious to him – but he had to admit that it seemed to be happening on a more regular basis now. Sometimes, he did it on purpose because the set up was too perfect to ignore, or because he enjoyed seeing her reaction; but sometimes, like that moment at the top of the stairs, Oliver caught himself off guard with how naturally he responded to her. Once upon a time he might have argued that flirting was a knee-jerk reaction – and in some instances it still was, because it could come in handy as a diversionary tactic – but that was no longer the case. In fact, much of his skill in that department had died on the island. All he had to do was think of the awkward invitation to dinner he'd given Makenna, or the disastrous result of that invitation. No, Oliver was not the practiced flirt that he had once been; he was too sharp for that now, too stoic and withdrawn to turn on the charm for long. More than that, he found that charm mostly exhausting now. He wasn't that person anymore, and he had neither the drive nor the patience to pretend for any substantial amount of time.

That wasn't the case with Felicity. Aside from their first meeting – or maybe their first few meetings – Oliver had never tried to charm her. When he did flirt with her it wasn't a tactic, or a defense, or a calculation; for the most part it wasn't even planned. Flirting with Felicity just sort of … came naturally to him. Even when he made the decision to do it consciously, he did it because he wanted to. He never really knew what sort of reaction to expect: sometimes she responded by flirting in return; sometimes her eyebrows drew together and she tried to determine if that was really what he was doing; and sometimes, she either ignored or missed it completely. Occasionally, when he succeeded in catching her truly off guard, she gave him that stricken sort of look and blushed. Those reactions were some of his favorite.

Oliver cursed into his pillow. What in the hell was he thinking? He lifted his head to check the little clock nearby. Nearly two o'clock in the morning and he was thinking about flirting with Felicity. Not just flirting with her, but also giving serious thought to _how many pillows she used_. Who did that? Other than him, apparently.

The computer servers had started to whir again. Oliver distracted himself by trying to meditate to the sound. He had learned to meditate on the island, but he'd never perfected it the way Shado had. She could sit down anywhere and close her eyes and achieve that inner quiet almost instantly. That had never been true for him. His brain was too active for his own good sometimes.

Oliver shoved those thoughts away, and all the other ones as well. He concentrated on the quiet whir of the servers, and the push of his chest against the bed as he inhaled. Then, he let his awareness of those things drop away as well.

The meditation worked; Oliver fell asleep with his head turned toward the computer servers.

* * *

On the other side of the world, Sara Lance threw herself behind the tire of a stationary truck. Bullets whistled through the air as she searched wildly for any sign of Nyssa. Where the hell had that woman gone? Sara had told her very clearly to run for the vehicle.

At the first break in the gunfire, Sara popped out from behind the tire and unleashed a volley of throwing knives. More than half connected with their targets, and she ducked behind the truck again as the hail of bullets resumed.

Nyssa coalesced in the space above her. Her bow sang as she fired off a round of arrows, and the gunfire stopped again.

Sara didn't wait. "Run," she hissed, grabbing her lover's hand and sprinting around the corner of the next building. They turned just in time to see the truck they'd crouched behind explode. "Mortar?"

"Rocket," Nyssa corrected. "I do not understand, that door was supposed to be unlocked and ready for us."

"We were betrayed," Sara spat angrily. "Those men were waiting for us."

Nyssa clenched her jaw. "We must enter that building."

"How? That lock has redundancies for its redundancies. Not to mention …" a rocket smashed into the far side of the building, "… we were not prepared for this kind of firepower."

"I can get us close to the building," Nyssa assured her. "But I cannot get us past those locks."

An idea sprung to life in Sara's mind, but she hesitated to examine it closely. There was no way she could go through with it. It would be wrong to ask, and she knew that; it would be wrong to drag an innocent into the situation. The mission was personal; not only that, but in her heart of hearts Sara wasn't certain she wanted it to succeed. She knew who was in that building, though Ra's Al Ghul had been careful not to tell her. Nyssa had been the one to share the information, as was so often the case. Sara knew that failing on this front would have dire consequences, but she also understood that sometimes the biggest losses were disguised as victories.

There was no love lost between Nyssa and the woman in that building. Sara knew that. She also understood that there was an undeniable desire in Nyssa to save her, because a secret part of her lover believed that the other woman could be saved. There is a chance, Nyssa had told her; there is a chance for her. Sara had a feeling that Nyssa's reasons for wanting to save that woman had little to do with her as a person, but with Nyssa's need to believe that there was still some hope in the world.

Nyssa Al Ghul needed to believe that there were people in the world who could not be twisted by her father, even if she could not admit it.

Sara knew of just such a person. She didn't know, though, if she had a right to ask that person for help in saving someone who might not deserve such a rescue. No one under Ra's' command was a good person – not really.

"I will not leave her to die," Nyssa vowed fiercely. Her eyes, the only visible part of her face, were hard and sharp beneath her hood. When she looked at Sara, they softened. "Please, my darling."

Sara considered it one of life's great mysteries that the world had not been destroyed for love. Whatever her personal opinion was on the worth of that woman's life, she would do almost anything for the love of the woman in front of her. Right or wrong, she could not deny Nyssa.

Wordlessly, she pulled a small black cell phone out of her cleavage. Nyssa narrowed her eyes when she saw it, glaring first at the nondescript object, and then at Sara.

"Assassins do not carry cell phones," she said in obvious displeasure. "They are dangerous."

"Yeah, well, you're about to thank me for carrying this one."

Sara was punching in a long line of numbers when a line of men appeared around the building. Swiftly, Nyssa pulled back her bowstring and started picking them off.

"Move!" Nyssa yelled back at her.

Sara felt a little ridiculous holding a cell phone to her ear and dodging bullets. With her free hand, she tossed a long dagger at a man who had tried to charge at her.

Sometimes, her life was downright unbelievable.

* * *

Felicity had chosen to take the job at Tech Village for one very obvious reason: they were closed on the weekends. An almost unheard of practice in such an impatient and demanding age, but her manager had once mentioned that it had something to do with the owner's religious background. She didn't care about the reasoning: all she cared about was having the weekends off. Especially this weekend, because tonight she was taking Digg, Lyla, and Oliver out for a nice dinner.

Being the planner that she was, Felicity had woken up that morning and immediately started trying to decide what to wear. Lyla had phoned on Wednesday to pass on her choice of restaurant: a nice Italian place named Roma that Felicity was very excited to try. Lyla had also tried to talk her out of paying for them, but Felicity wouldn't hear of it. She had a feeling that Lyla must have known she wouldn't succeed, because she'd stipulated that if Felicity was going to pay for the dinner, then she was going to pay for the wine. When she had called the restaurant to make reservations later that day, Felicity had made polite inquiries about their wine listing; somehow, she had a feeling that the drinks might be more expensive than the food.

In the course of deciding what to wear, Felicity had realized that she needed a few things. She'd showered and made sure to leave her hair down so that she could style it properly later, and then set off to do some shopping. Maybe she'd buy a new perfume while she was out. Her mother had once accused her of having a perfume fetish, and Felicity had never grown out of that particular quirk. She had a thing about smelling good, and there were so many fantastic perfumes and body sprays in the world.

The radio was blasting Lady Gaga when Felicity's phone started to ring. She normally patched it through the car's Bluetooth system, but she had apparently forgotten to do that today. Blindly, she reached over to the passenger seat and fished her phone out of her purse. She didn't bother to glance at the screen.

"Hello?"

Felicity jumped when her greeting was answered by muffled gunfire. Suddenly worried, she checked the caller ID, but the number displayed there was international. Who the hell had called her?

Then, "Felicity?"

Her mouth dropped open. "Sara?" she asked incredulously. "Oh my god, what's going on? Why are you being shot at? Why are you calling me if you're being shot at?"

"I need your help." Distant gunfire punctuated her words, and then someone was yelling unintelligibly. "Nyssa and I need a favor."

"From me?" Felicity squeaked. "I'm halfway around the world, what can I do to help?"

"Are you near a computer?"

"No." Felicity checked the street sign she'd just passed. Well, she was sort of close to a computer; she had unwittingly chosen to drive a route that took her a few blocks away from the lair. "But I can be. Hold on."

On the other end of the line, someone screamed. Sara's voice sounded both angry and worried as she called out to Nyssa.

Felicity drove faster than was strictly necessary. The traffic wasn't terrible for early Saturday morning, and she knew a back route to the lair. She navigated her Mini Cooper through several side streets and one rather narrow alleyway; she was going so fast she may have even caught an inch or two of air off the ramp into their garage.

She didn't bother to grab her purse. With her phone pressed to her ear and a silent thank you to the cosmos for her choice to wear flats instead of heels, Felicity raced to the door.

"Sara? Are you there?" Felicity asked. She heaved the door open and took the stairs as fast as her legs would go.

"I'm here."

"Just hold on another second, I'm almost there."

Oliver had leapt off of his bed as soon as the door had opened. His eyes widened when he caught sight of Felicity running to the computers, but she barely spared him a glance.

"What's wrong?" he demanded.

Felicity had never been more thankful for the speed of her computers than when they booted up that morning. She pulled her phone away from her ear and hit the speaker button, then set it on the table in front of her.

"Tell me what to do," she commanded.

"Can you ping my location?" Sara replied.

Felicity's fingers moved like lighting strikes over the keyboard. She was vaguely aware of Oliver standing behind her shoulder, and that she had apparently woken him. He'd come from the direction of his bed and had on a pair of sweats.

"Are you in Tajikistan?"

"Yes. There's a building, about six hundred feet from us. We need to bypass the security system. Our man on the inside set us up. We walked straight into a firefight."

A loud crackle, like overpowering static, drowned out everything else for a moment. Felicity's breath caught in her chest.

"Make that a rocket fight," Sara muttered darkly.

"They're firing _rockets_ at you?" Felicity whispered in horror.

Sara ignored the question. "Can you get us in?"

Felicity could feel the panic building in her chest. Sara was thousands of miles away from her and literally in the line of fire and she'd called Felicity, of all people, to help her. She bit her bottom lip and started typing furiously, hacking into satellites and piggybacking her way through their signals to chase down Sara's building. She tried to block out the chaos that was filtering through her phone, but every time she heard Sara curse or call out for Nyssa she flinched. Faster, she told herself, you have to be faster.

The building wasn't hard to ferret out. That many security measures in one place in what looked like the middle of nowhere stood out like a sore thumb. Lines of code sped across her screens as she fed the system shutdown commands, and the first line of defenses began to fall.

Over the speakerphone, someone gasped and groaned deeply. There was a string of shouts, mostly male, and more gunfire, and then the undeniable twang of a bowstring; Felicity thought she might cry.

"Sara?" There was no answer. "Please don't die," Felicity murmured, and a tear slipped down her cheek. "Sara?"

"I'm okay," Sara finally answered.

"Oh, thank god." Then, "I'm in. The security system is disabled."

"Nyssa!" Sara yelled. "Go!"

Felicity had expected the line to go dead, but it didn't. Instead, the sound of labored breathing filled the room. She was biting her lip so hard it would probably bleed. At the least, Sara had been shot, or maybe stabbed, and Felicity was sure that Nyssa had also been hurt somehow. Sara had said they'd been betrayed. As she created a loop in the security system to give continuous shut down and bypass commands, Felicity wondered why they were trying to get into the building in the first place. Sara had gone back to Nyssa, and thus to the League of Assassins; the odds were good that they were on a mission. Felicity hadn't thought to ask what exactly she was helping them to do. Sara was her friend, and she was obviously in danger, and she hadn't given much thought to anything beyond that. Until now; now, a real sense of dread had settled in her stomach.

Had Felicity just helped them kill someone? Her stomach clenched. She didn't know how she would handle that information, if it were true. Logically, she thought that she'd probably helped Oliver kill at least one person in the beginning, although she might not have known that was what she was doing. Felicity had never asked, because she didn't want to know the answer.

Oh, God. What if she'd just signed someone's death certificate? She knew that Sara had killed people, and Nyssa, in service to the League. What if that was what they were doing right now? Chasing down a target, a person that she knew nothing about; what if that person had a family? What if they didn't deserve to die? Granted, Felicity was usually the one who insisted that no one deserved to die, and that killing was not the answer. But what if the person Sara and Nyssa were pursuing truly did not deserve to die?

The feeling of Oliver's fingers curling into the flesh beneath her collarbone was what made Felicity realize that he had put a hand on her shoulder at some point.

"Sara?" She had lost track of what was happening.

Sara's voice was breathless when she answered. "You just saved a life, Felicity. And I don't mean mine."

The air whooshed out of Felicity's lungs. "What? Whose?"

There was a pause. Sara was either debating on what to tell her, or asking Nyssa's permission. "Her name is Talia, and she's …"

Sara's voice was cut off abruptly, and then replaced with another. Felicity didn't immediately recognize it as Nyssa's. "My sister," Nyssa finished. "You have done me a great service. I will not forget it."

"Oh, uh …" Felicity trailed off, embarrassed. The only time she'd met Nyssa, the woman had been leading a small army of assassins. That introduction didn't seem very conducive to a casual sort of friendship. Or friendship in general, really. "I'm glad everyone is okay. I mean, not okay, okay, because I'm pretty sure you got shot or something, but. Well. Alive."

There was a small commotion, and then Sara was back on the line. "Are you in the lair?"

"Yes."

Felicity thought that Sara might be smiling when she spoke next. "Nyssa has asked me to name you. She says she doesn't know you well enough, and wouldn't choose properly."

"Name me?" Felicity queried. "Isn't that what my parents did?"

Sara chuckled. "Even over the phone you're cute. It's sort of a … tradition. Everyone has a name they're born with, and a name they earn. It's an honor thing. Nyssa thinks you've earned yours."

"Why does my life revolve around weird conversations?" Felicity half whispered to herself. "So? What is this new name of mine."

"Nur."

Felicity did her best to repeat it. "What does it mean?"

This time, she was certain that Sara was smiling. "I have to go. Thank you, Felicity. You saved our asses today."

"Wait! What does it mean?"

"It means 'light'. Tell Oliver hello for me."

The line went dead. An ethereal silence stretched through the room as Felicity stared at her computer screens. The adrenaline had started to bleed out of her system, leaving her shaky and breathless in its wake. She could feel the cold spot on her cheek where the tear had fallen when she'd thought Sara was dying.

That thought was the one that stuck. Sara, on the other side of the world where none of them could reach her, probably alone in the field with only Nyssa for back up … how badly had she been hurt? Would they make it back to wherever they were going? Would there be anyone waiting for them, like Felicity waited for her team?

"Felicity." Oliver's voice was calm and quiet above her. His hand was still on her shoulder.

Felicity swept to her feet quickly, her chair rolling several feet away from her. She spun on Oliver. Her heart felt like it was trying to fly away and she was shaking and angry as a hellcat. Felicity pointed a finger at him and then stepped forward, glaring at him all the while.

"You are all going to kill me," she raved. "Every single one of you idiots and your near death experiences shaves at least five years off of my life, do you know that?" She poked him in the chest. "I am not all powerful. Or all knowing, for that matter. One of these days you're going to ask me to do something that I can't, and you're going to get yourself killed. Have I told you how pissed off that will make me?"

"Felicity."

"I thought she was dead! I thought Sara died just a minute ago, on the other side of the planet and totally unreachable. Do you have any idea what that would have done to me?" Felicity was winding down. Her anger was falling away, and had started to look an awful lot like fear. She blew out a shaky breath. "You're all assholes." She finally locked eyes with Oliver, who had not moved away from her and looked as calm as ever. That only irritated her. "Assholes," she repeated firmly.

Oliver reached out and enveloped her in a hug. The movement was unexpected. Felicity found herself suddenly dwarfed by large arms, and then her cheek was against his warm chest. Beneath her ear, his heartbeat was a drum. She wrapped her arms around him reflexively. Her shoulders slumped with her next breath, as if she was deflating, and then she closed her eyes.

They stood that way for a long time. Felicity hadn't meant to freak out, and she was generally pretty good about keeping her cool in stressful situations, but that … that had almost been cruel. She hadn't even been able to see what was happening!

"Are you okay?"

Felicity nodded instead of speaking, and that was when she realized that Oliver was not wearing a shirt. Her eyes flew open. Sure enough, the only sight that greeted her was a length of bare skin. The Bratva star was above her nose. Below that, there was a long scar.

Her stomach flipped over, and this time it had nothing to do with fear. Oliver was warm and his arms pleasantly heavy against her back. He had never hugged her before. They had hugged, but both times she had been the one to reach for him. This time, he had been the one to initiate it, and he was hugging her with both arms instead of just one. Felicity wondered how badly she had frightened him with her whirlwind appearance and mad dash to the computers, and if that was part of the reason he was hugging her now.

When Oliver finally released her, he moved both hands to her shoulders and stared intently into her face. "Mind telling me what that was about?"

Felicity filled him in on the few details he was missing. He listened quietly, nodding a little when she got to the part where she'd blown into the lair like a hurricane. He'd been dozing off and on for about an hour before that. She'd caught him half-asleep, and she'd looked downright terrified when he set eyes on her. The terror appeared to have downgraded itself into general unease now.

Though she'd definitely been angry when she'd taken to yelling at him. Oliver knew that she'd been talking to him, but she'd also been talking to Sara, even if the other woman wasn't here to listen. Felicity never swore, but she'd even called them all assholes more than once. In a different situation, he would have laughed.

The problem was that Oliver did know what it would do to Felicity the day one of them died. There was no "if" about it. They would all die eventually, but the line of work that people like him and Sara went into ended the same way, and sooner rather than later. He knew that, and so did Sara. Felicity seemed to be the only one who didn't, or refused to acknowledge it, and he preferred it that way.

"I'm sorry if I startled you," Felicity apologized quietly. "I was already in my car not far from here when she called." A new thought struck her then, and Oliver watched the color drain from her face. "I was on my way to the store. We got so lucky, Oliver. What if I'd already been downtown when she called? What if I couldn't get here in time? Or if I didn't hear my phone ring, or didn't answer?"

"Hey," Oliver soothed. "None of those things happened."

"But what if they had?"

He sighed and squeezed the tiny shoulders under his hands. "Sara knows the risks, Felicity. We all do."

"Then maybe you should quit."

The words stunned him. Felicity was looking at him earnestly, and he knew she wasn't joking. She reached up to pull one of his hands off her shoulders and hold it between her cooler ones.

"You don't have to do this, Oliver. None of you do. Life doesn't have to be like this. You can quit."

He didn't know what to say. Felicity had never asked him to stop being the vigilante. She believed in the work that they did, and that their city needed saving. She knew what it meant to him to put on that hood every night. She had to know that he couldn't just give up, not now, so why was she asking him to?

"You know I can't do that, Felicity."

She sighed in defeat and dropped his hand. "I do," she agreed. "And I understand. I just … I wish you could."

Felicity wasn't looking at him anymore. She moved away from him to retrieve her phone, and only then did Oliver realize that she didn't have anything else with her. This was not the Felicity he usually saw, dressed smartly for the day and ready to face the world. She looked as she had that morning they'd shared in her townhouse: casual and relaxed. He remembered her telling him that she had only meant to make a trip to the store.

Felicity made to walk past him, but stopped when she pulled even with his arm. He heard her inhale quietly and turned his head to look at her.

"Maybe it's wrong, Oliver, and maybe it makes me a bad person. But if I could, I'd take every one of you somewhere far away and never let you leave. Lian Yu, or Madagascar, or some place with no name at the end of the world. It wouldn't matter, as long as you were safe. Starling City, and the League of Assassins, and everything else be damned."

Felicity sounded so sad that it struck him like lightning. Oliver had always known that she worried about them, because that's just who she was, but he had never considered how deep that worry went. He had spent several minutes last night wondering how many pillows she used, but he'd never wondered about how frightened she must be for them.

Oliver wanted to hug her again. He reached out for her, clasping one of her hands, and then stopped when she turned hers over. Palm to palm, she stared at their hands as she interlaced their fingers. That was new. She tugged gently on his hand and lifted it toward her, and Oliver actually felt breathless at the idea that she might be about to kiss it. At the last minute, she changed her mind, and squeezed it instead.

"Dinner is at seven." Her voice was a whisper. "Should I pick you up?" She finally looked up at him.

He wanted to say something. Something reassuring, something that didn't have anything to do with dinner, but he couldn't think of the words. Felicity had never said anything like that before. They had shared a lot in the last year or so, but something about her confession felt … personal. No, more than personal, it felt private - intimate.

Felicity loved them; truly loved them, so much that if she was given the choice, she would rather save a handful of lost and damaged souls that had more blood on their hands than in their bodies, than a city full of innocent people.

That knowledge was staggering.

"Oliver?"

His throat felt dry. "Sure," he managed to answer.

Felicity's hand slipped out of his and she disappeared behind him. Oliver did not move from his spot as he listened to her footsteps fade. He did not move for a long time.


	7. An Evening Out

_**Author's Note: I feel like this is not my best chapter, but I finished it a few days ago and have gone through edits twice, so ... this is how it's going down. It takes place the same day as the last chapter, and is a continuation of that evening (just to be clear). I hope you're not disappointed in this one. Also, thank you to everyone who has read/reviewed/favorited - seeing those alerts makes my day! Let me know what you think of this one.**_

_**Edit: baybelletrist over on AO3 pointed out that there was an incorrect usage of an idiom in this chapter that I didn't catch, so I've gone back and changed it. Everything else is the same. Thanks for catching that and pointing it out! =)**_

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By the time she got home from shopping, Felicity felt foolish for what she'd said to Oliver. Not the part about wanting to take them all away and keep them safe, because she'd meant every word of that and more, but the part where she'd told him he could quit being the Arrow. She felt foolish because she knew he would never do that; but she also felt foolish because a part of her didn't want him to give up being the vigilante. What Oliver did was dangerous, and always would be, but it was good work. He had already made such a difference in their city. Team Arrow fought the good fight; it was grueling, dangerous, scary work that was definitely not inside the constraints of the law, but it mattered. What Oliver did – what they all did, mattered. Felicity believed in the work they were doing. She believed in them. Only sometimes, when it felt like the people she cared about were a little too close to crossing the line and inviting the darkness a little farther in the door, did her fear get the best of her. Starling City, and so many other cities like it in the world, needed to be saved – but why did it have to be her friends that saved it? Let someone else save it, a part of her wanted to cry, let someone else do the work. Just come with me, and be safe, and be happy.

Maybe, someday, they'd do exactly that – but she doubted it. That was not who these people were. Felicity knew her friends, and understood them, and they were just not the people who gave up fighting. Against insurmountable odds, or drones, or bombs, or shipwrecks – it didn't matter. They were the people who fought, and kept going.

So Felicity fought with them, in her own way. She hacked government satellites, and patched up their wounds, and gave them every ounce of strength she possessed when they thought they'd lost their own; she lifted them up, or knocked them down, and never, ever told them they couldn't do it.

And, until today, she had never asked a single one of them to be less than what they were: fighters.

Felicity blamed that on the adrenaline rush, and subsequent crash. She'd been frightened, and worried, and Sara had asked her to do something difficult in a pinch. That was all. She'd panicked a little, and Oliver had been the only one there to take it out on. She felt better now, though, and had recovered from the morning's incident. Barring a few melancholy thoughts, her excitement for an evening out with her friends had taken over.

Roy had opted out of going with them. Felicity had done her best to goad him, and promise that they wanted him there, and that he had every right to go; he had steadfastly refused. She sort of understood, really, but she hoped that he'd adjust more fully to his new circumstances sooner rather than later.

She had taken her time picking out an outfit. The restaurant Lyla had chosen was nice, but not exorbitant, and this wasn't exactly a date. She was going out for dinner with a group of friends. Still, Felicity had had a hard time deciding on what was an appropriate dress code for the occasion. In the end, she opted for a bright blue and white cocktail dress. The cool colors would complement whatever suits Digg and Oliver decided to wear, whether they were black or gray. Felicity had never really seen Lyla dressed up, but she had a feeling that the other woman probably preferred earth tones. So, in any case, she wouldn't clash with anyone.

Felicity left her hair down. She debated on doing ringlets, but decided that she didn't want to spend that long on styling it. A few soft waves would do the trick. Her glasses were exchanged for contacts, and then she set about applying her make-up. For her lipstick, she chose a fire engine red; the color contrasted nicely with the ones in her dress.

There was no reason for Felicity to feel nervous, but she did. She took her time choosing her earrings, settling on a pair of slim, petite arrows that hung tip down. A little smile tugged at her lips as she put them on; the earrings could be a private joke for the four of them, a silent tribute to their extracurricular activities. Granted, Lyla wasn't necessarily a member of the team, but still. Lyla knew what Digg did, and Oliver's secret identity, and had helped them in the fight against Slade. That earned her an honorary membership, at the least.

Felicity's stomach was doing unnerving somersaults as she left her home. Her cell phone announced the time to be just after six; by the time she got to the lair, it'd be close to thirty minutes past the hour. They should make it to the restaurant a few minutes early.

"There is no reason to be nervous," she muttered to herself as she drove. "This is not a date. Digg and Lyla will be there."

The words did nothing to soothe her nerves. If anything, it actually made them worse, because what new and horrifying way would she find to embarrass herself over dinner?

She parked in the lair's garage and then used the walk to the door to give herself a pep talk. These were her friends; the people she spent most of her waking hours with. They had saved cities and outsmarted criminals together, so surely they could enjoy a night out with each other. Admittedly, Digg and Lyla were not the ones that made her nervous. Oliver's voice kept flitting through her thoughts: "I think the word you're looking for is double date". Only it wasn't a double date, because she and Oliver weren't dating.

They weren't dating, and this wasn't a double date, but he had told her he loved her.

"Not going there," she said to no one in particular.

When Felicity reached the bottom of the stairs, Oliver was nowhere to be seen.

"Oliver?"

"Be right out." The bathroom door muffled his voice.

As was usually the case, her eyes instantly traveled to her computers. Only as she looked at them did Felicity remember that she'd meant to look into that name Nyssa had given her. Well, Sara had given it to her, but it was sort of a gift from both of them. Assuming that names could be gifts, anyway. Felicity glanced over her shoulder at the bathroom door, which was still closed, and then down at her phone. They had plenty of time. She could pull up a quick Google search without making them late.

When Oliver emerged from the bathroom a minute later, he was not remotely surprised to see a small blonde figure seated in front of the computer monitors. That woman could not resist the pull of technology.

"That can't wait?" he asked as he stepped up behind her.

"It's just a quick search," Felicity answered off-handedly.

He stood behind her and watched her type. At the top of the page, Felicity had typed the words "Arabic" and "light". Oliver was surprised to see that that was what she was searching for, because he'd been thinking about that name Sara had given her since she'd left. He'd never heard the word before, but something about the way Sara had told Felicity what it meant – and about the "light" thing itself – kept nagging at him.

Felicity chose the first webpage with a summary that caught her eye. She scanned the page and then made a pleased sort of _humph_ sound in the back of her throat.

"That's sort of sweet, actually," she muttered. Then, reading from the page even though Oliver was probably close enough to read it for himself, "The name Nur is unisex, and means light, or the opposite of darkness, and radiance, as in something that gives off light on its own, such as a star."

Behind her, Oliver felt a little like he'd been punched in the stomach. You need someone who can harness that light that's still inside you, Sara had said all those weeks ago. Then she'd conveniently given Felicity an Arabic name that _literally_ translated to "light". The part of him that wasn't finding it irrationally difficult to breathe wanted to growl in irritation. Very subtle, Sara, he thought acerbically. No wonder she'd sounded so gleeful over the phone.

"I like it," Felicity said, drawing him out of his thoughts. "It's …"

"Fitting," Oliver interjected.

"Flattering," Felicity finished simultaneously. "It's prettier than 'Godmother', at any rate." She put the computers to sleep instead of turning them off completely. She pushed her chair back gently, unsure of how close Oliver was and not wanting to hit him, and then stood and turned to face him. "Wait." She tilted her head to the side as she looked at him. "How is it fitting, exactly?"

Oliver was not blind. In fact, he had perfect eyesight; so he found himself thoroughly speechless when Felicity finally stood up, and he was granted his first real look at her for the evening. He had never denied that his partner was a stunning woman, but he often forgot in the drudge of their day-to-day activities how inadequate that word seemed when used in conjunction with Felicity Smoak. The blue streak that cut down the middle of her white dress (or maybe the dress was blue, and the sides were white) made her eyes appear impossibly bright beneath her dark lashes, and waves of gold hair swathed one of her shoulders when she tilted her head at him. She pursed fiery red lips at him and furrowed her brow.

"Oliver?"

What were they talking about? He cleared his throat. "We should go. We don't want to be late."

Felicity startled and gasped out a little "oh!" as she glanced down at her phone. They weren't late yet, but her Google search had shaved off more of their time cushion than she'd anticipated.

"Right," she agreed, breezing past him on the way to the stairs.

Oliver caught up to her easily. When they reached the landing, he stepped around her to hold the door open. He held out an arm as she passed him and then fell into step just behind her; his breath stuttered in his chest when his fingertips grazed over bare skin. There was a diamond shaped cutout in the back of her dress that he hadn't noticed before.

Felicity and her love of clothes with cutouts were going to put an early end to his life.

She knew the moment he touched her, and the moment his hand fell away. Felicity started talking to distract herself.

"I'm sorry," she started uncertainly, "About what I said earlier. Asking you to quit being the vigilante was wrong, and I know that. I don't even want you to, really."

Oliver arched an eyebrow at her in silent challenge.

"Well. Of course I want you to, but I know that what we do makes a difference in this city. I just sort of freaked out after the whole Sara nearly dying thing."

Oliver's hand spanned the gap between them again and the pads of his fingers pressed lightly into the small of her back. "I know."

Felicity swallowed and nodded. Miniscule electric shocks were radiating up her spine and through her body, originating from each one of his fingertips. How in the hell was she going to get through this dinner?

She didn't notice until they were on their way to the restaurant that Oliver had chosen to wear a gray suit. The radio station had decided to play one of her favorite new songs, so she hit the volume button on her steering wheel and turned it up a few decibels. She glanced over at Oliver to see if the increase bothered him, but he either didn't notice the change, or didn't mind. The thought crossed her mind that he looked a little big in the confines of her Mini, and then from there her thoughts jumped to the fact that the blue in her dress complemented the gray of his suit nicely.

Felicity was a mover. She could never resist tapping her fingers to the beat of the music, or shimmying her shoulders, or tapping her toes; she never felt the need to. One of her hands had started to quietly tap out the beat against the back of her steering wheel, and all of her nervous energy channeled itself into the movement. Then, she started to hum.

Oliver had taken to watching her as soon as the tapping started. Felicity had a good sense of rhythm, only losing the beat when she had to turn a corner or use her blinker. He didn't know if she was even aware of the way her head had started to bob. He caught her soft hum just beneath the strain of the music. At first, that's all it was: a wordless hum.

He caught the movement of her lips first. Her words were whispered in time with the song, so he only understood a few of them, but he was more focused on watching her than listening. Oliver angled his shoulder more into the door and turned his chest slightly toward her so he could see her better, but she didn't notice.

The turn into the restaurant parking lot was a right turn. Felicity's eyes traveled in the direction of her path, and then they kept going, only to find Oliver half turned in his seat and watching her with a nameless expression.

"What?" Felicity queried, suddenly self-conscious.

Oliver smirked. "I don't know that song."

Oh. Of course he'd seen her silly dancing-that-wasn't-quite-dancing. "Uh, it's called 'Latch'," she offered, because she didn't know what else to say.

Felicity parked the car. She'd barely had enough time to gather her purse and cell phone before her door was being opened; she hadn't realized that Oliver was already out of his seat. A hand stretched out for her.

Well, that was awfully sweet of him. Felicity slid one of her hands into his and let him help her out of the car, smiling widely at him when they were face to face again. "Thank you."

Oliver's hand drifted to the small of her back and stayed there as they made their way into the restaurant. Felicity gave the maître d her name and he promptly led them through the softly lit room.

They were ten minutes early and Digg and Lyla had still beaten them there. Digg stood as they approached the table, smiling as he moved around the table to greet Felicity. Even with her high heels on she had to stretch to press a kiss against his cheek.

"We would've been here sooner," she explained, "But I had …"

"To do something with your computers," Digg finished, his eyes twinkling with humor.

Felicity chuckled. "Apparently I've become boring in my old age."

Oliver had pulled her chair out for her and waited until she was seated comfortably to take his spot next to her.

"Old?" Lyla repeated. "Keep talking like that and us relics will perish right here at the table."

"Hey," Digg warned. "Speak for yourself. I'm not a day over 21."

They laughed. Felicity's nervousness began to drain away as she watched Digg and Lyla smile at each other, obviously crazy about one another. Digg was in high spirits that evening and hadn't stopped smiling since they arrived. The sight was good for her heart, and made her smile widely in response. When she looked to Oliver, he caught her eye and winked. He hadn't missed their partner's happiness either.

Lyla insisted that they should order a bottle of wine. She reminded them that it was a celebratory dinner, and that no celebration was complete without a fine wine; Felicity was still trying to insist that it wasn't necessary when the waiter appeared. Lyla had sent him away with a request for their best wine before Felicity had even managed to finish her sentence.

"Don't make me hack into your bank account to repay you," Felicity threatened teasingly.

Digg, who had pulled his chair right next to Lyla's and now sat with his arm draped across the back of hers, nodded at his girlfriend. "She can do that."

"She would do that," Oliver amended wryly.

As the wine was brought and the food ordered, the conversation meandered easily from topic to topic. Oliver listened as Felicity grilled them on what sex they each hoped the baby was, or whether they preferred to leave it as a surprise. From there she asked about names, and then that ended up in a conversation about how they'd known so many people named such and such.

He'd been listening so intently that Felicity caught him unaware when she turned shining eyes and rosy cheeks on him to ask, "What about you, Oliver? How many of us did you meet before, well, us?"

Across the table, Digg and Lyla laughed. Oliver smiled, more at the brightness of her expression than what she'd said, and tried to remember. "I've known a lot of John's," he started, glancing at his friend. "And I think I went to college with a Lyla."

"I will give you twenty bucks if you can remember which college it was," Digg deadpanned.

Oliver mock glared at the other man, but the expression didn't hold. His eyes cut back to Felicity. Whether she meant to or not, she was watching him with rapt attention. Her elbow was braced against the table, an open palm pressed against the column of her throat.

"You're the only Felicity." He might have meant to say the words differently, but they dovetailed off of his tongue without giving him a chance to.

"You can say that again," Digg chortled.

Felicity blew out a breath that ended in a laugh and ducked her head. Then, waving a finger at the man across the table, "You'd be lost without me, John Diggle."

Digg's expression softened and he nodded. "That is the truth."

Oliver offered to pour them all another glass of wine. When Felicity hesitated, Lyla jumped in with an offer to either drive them home or pay for a cab. He refilled her glass while she was trying to insist that such a measure would not be necessary.

When she realized what he'd done, Felicity tossed a half-hearted glare at him over her bare shoulder. The movement pulled the hair away from her ear, and in the soft yellow lights her earring caught a reflection and glimmered. Oliver barely caught himself before leaning over to catch one between his fingers.

"Nice earrings," he said instead.

Instead of being embarrassed, Felicity smiled so brightly her entire face lit up. She turned to their friends and tugged gently on one, holding it away from her hair so that they could see.

"Something tells me you wore those on purpose," Lyla stated.

"Call it our own private joke," Felicity replied. Then, quickly and quietly to Oliver, "Not that I'm calling you a joke, because I'm not."

Oliver schooled his expression. "That's good," he intoned lowly. "I'd hate to have to retaliate."

Felicity's eyes widened minutely, and then the corners of her mouth started to crawl upward. "Did you just make a joke? Are you teasing me? Hallelujah, Oliver Queen has a sense of humor!"

Oliver's placid look fell away as he dissolved into laughter. That was not the reaction he'd anticipated; trust Felicity to turn the joke on him.

"Don't you start that," Digg warned her. "It's bad enough that Oliver refers to himself in the third person."

"Oh, John's told me about that," Lyla added, grinning at him. "That is kind of weird."

"Oliver Queen is kind of weird." Try as he might, Oliver couldn't keep a straight face.

Next to him, Felicity had started laughing so hard she had to cover her mouth. She tipped her head down in an attempt to hide her face, but the way her shoulders shook gave her away. She laughed herself breathless.

Maybe it was the wine, or the lightness of the evening, but when Felicity could finally stop laughing long enough to talk she leaned over and put a hand on Oliver's leg, just above his knee.

"That was the best response ever," she told him.

Oliver's skin was tingling when Felicity pulled her hand away. He had the idea that if he were to look, there would be an imprint of her hand burned into his skin clearly enough to define every slim finger.

Sitting calmly next to her was a near impossible feat by the end of the night. She was so close that he could smell her perfume, and every so often their knees would bump under the table; being so close to her and knowing that he couldn't touch her – that he couldn't lean over and press his fingers into the flesh just below the hem of her dress, or brush a hand through her hair, was almost painful. Oliver wanted to touch her. He wanted to know that he could touch her.

They left the restaurant nearly three hours after they had arrived. Felicity had excused herself to use the restroom at one point, only to come back with a receipt for their dinner in hand. Lyla groused about their agreement that she would pay for the wine and vowed that she would find a way to repay the other woman. Felicity just smiled.

Once outside, Lyla offered to get them a cab, and Digg made him swear repeatedly that he'd only had two glasses of wine when Oliver said he'd drive them home. Felicity wasn't drunk, but they'd come to a silent agreement that she'd had enough to put driving out of the question.

Digg wrapped a huge arm around her shoulders in a hug before they left. Just like her greeting, Felicity punctuated her goodbye with a kiss to his cheek. Then, she hugged Lyla and told her for the hundredth time how happy she was for them.

Oliver and Felicity stood side by side and watched their friends disappear around the corner. When they were gone, he gently touched a hand to her shoulder. Felicity turned toward him with a quiet smile.

"They're so happy together." Her voice was quiet as they walked back to her car.

Oliver noticed that her arms were crossed to fend off the chill in the night air. He slipped out of his suit jacket and then slung it over her shoulders, pulling her closer into his side with his far hand. Felicity stepped into him without complaint. She pulled his jacket tightly around her and hoped he didn't notice the way she dropped her nose against the fabric.

He did.

"They are," Oliver agreed. When they reached the red Mini Cooper, Oliver opened the passenger door for her and held out a hand to help her inside.

Felicity tried not to grin at him as he adjusted her seat and rearview mirror. "If you ever get a car, Oliver, I wouldn't suggest a Mini. How did you ever fit in the backseat?"

"I didn't have a choice."

They drove in silence for a bit, and then Felicity spoke again. "Have you ever been with someone who made you that happy?"

There was no way Oliver could answer that question. He had been happy with Laurel in the beginning, but he didn't think their happiness had looked like the kind Digg and Lyla shared. They had been foolhardy kids who'd thought the world was just a giant playground; being happy hadn't been hard then. There had been little to stand in their way of any happiness they wanted to chase.

Digg and Lyla were happy because they understood one another. They had endured Afghanistan together; they had gone their separate ways, only to find each other again years down the line. There was only one person in his life that Oliver thought he could achieve that kind of happiness with, and she was sitting next to him. Felicity knew every side of him. She was the only person other than Digg who was, and always had been, part of both sides of his life.

"I don't know," Oliver answered in a voice that was near a whisper. "Have you?"

"I was happy enough, for a while. But I was young, and it's hard to know what makes you happy when you're not certain who you are, or what you want."

Her words bounced around in his brain. Oliver was coming to understand what he wanted, but was he certain of whom he was? He knew who he was under a green hood, but what about when he wasn't? Who was he when he was just a nicely dressed man, driving a beautiful woman home?

"Did I bring up bad memories?"

"Hmm?" Oliver pulled into the garage behind her townhome.

Felicity waited to speak again until he'd moved around the car and helped her out of her seat. "You seem … tense," she said, leading the way to her door.

Oliver's hand pressed into his suit jacket until it was against her back. "I'm sorry, I was just thinking."

"Good thoughts?"

"I'm not sure."

Felicity plucked her keys from his hand to unlock the back door. She flipped on the lights in the mudroom and then stopped walking long enough to kick up feet and free them of her high heels. She was up the few stairs that led out of the mudroom and halfway into the kitchen when she realized that Oliver wasn't behind her anymore.

Oliver watched her stop and turn around to look at him. His jacket was so long that it covered the bottom hem of her dress and made it look like she had nothing on underneath. Her feet were bare, her toes painted sky blue, and she'd curled one of them against the cold tile of her floor. The red in her cheeks was only a few shades paler than the red on her lips.

"Come on. The guest bed has fresh sheets."

Oliver tucked his hands into his pants pockets and stepped forward, until his toes were against the last step of the three that separated the mudroom from the kitchen. He hadn't considered how he'd get back to the lair once he'd dropped Felicity off safely at home.

Felicity had a knack for reading him. "Oliver," she chided gently, moving to stand on the top step. "It's late. Get in here so we can go to bed."

He expected her to hedge her words, to backtrack so quickly that he had to work to keep up with her train of thought. She did neither of those things. Instead, she stood there and watched him, obviously waiting for him to move.

Standing on the top step as she was, Felicity's face was of a height with his. She was so close, closer than she'd been at the restaurant, even, and Oliver wanted so badly to reach for her. He could almost feel her skin against his fingertips. He thought about that tingling sensation that her hand had left on his leg and wondered for the second time if Felicity had burned her mark into him. What would it take to do the same to her?

Oliver knew that it would take only the smallest motion to kiss her; a slight lean forward, and he could taste the wine on her lips - on her tongue.

Felicity was the one to move. One of her bare arms snaked out from beneath his jacket to grasp his bicep. She stepped back, tugging him with her. He didn't resist. This was Felicity, he reminded himself, your partner. His very beautiful, very alluring partner who was leading him through her dimly lit kitchen like a lover.

Oliver pushed that thought away at the same time that she let go of his bicep, content that he was following her. Felicity finally stopped in front of the spare bedroom and pushed the door all the way open. She slipped the jacket from her shoulders, pressed it into one of his hands, and then smiled up at him.

"I had fun tonight," she said softly. "Now go to bed."

On a last (somewhat dangerous) whim, Felicity stretched all the way up onto the tips of her toes and ghosted a kiss over the stubble of his cheek.

"Goodnight, Oliver."

She'd already turned away to head to her bedroom when he rumbled out, "Goodnight, Felicity."

Oliver went to bed thinking that he should be given an award for the superhuman amount of self-control it had taken to keep himself from doing everything in his power to kiss Felicity Smoak senseless.


	8. Screw Murphy and his Law

_**Author's Note: So, some of you might be a little confused, because there was a chapter eight, and then there wasn't. And now there is again. After I posted the original chapter eight, a few of you let me know that it didn't really work for the story. After reading what you said, and then going back to really re-read everything, I decided to scrap the chapter completely and start over. There was a bit of a side story that I was going to introduce, but it wasn't horribly important to Olicity and the story won't suffer without it, so I scrapped that, too. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused. This chapter is completely new, and I hope that it doesn't disappoint (and, if you read the original chapter eight, I hope this one doesn't feel like such a misstep). Let me know what you think?**_

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When she was in college, Felicity had dated a man who swore by Murphy's Law. His name was Ryan, and he'd been a great guy for the most part. They hadn't stayed together long. He was a year older than Felicity, and other than wanting to have a five-year plan for everything, the only other thing Great Guy Ryan believed in completely was Murphy's Law. She had thought then that that was a terrible way to live life, always believing that something was about to go wrong just because it could.

Five years later, Felicity stared at her computer screens and wondered if there wasn't something to Murphy's Law after all.

Her week had started well. Really, it had. The dinner with Digg, Lyla, and Oliver, had put her in a good mood. She'd felt refreshed by the hours spent without worrying about who was going to get hurt. There had also been the decidedly charged moment between her and Oliver at the end of the night; Felicity had been certain at one point that he was about to kiss her. She couldn't decide if she was relieved, or irritated by the fact that the kiss had never come. There was no denying that she wanted to kiss Oliver, but wanting to didn't mean that she should. Not kissing him was probably a better idea because Felicity wasn't sure she'd stop once she started.

Monday and Tuesday had been nice. Her job at Tech Village was nothing special, but the work was easy. Even her night job had been going swimmingly: the guys had taken out a minor league drug lord with barely a scratch. Felicity would always worry about her friends when they were out, but that worry had lessened considerably. Roy was the new man on the team, but he knew what he was doing and hadn't given in to his temper once. Oliver had said once that Roy had been angry at the world before he was injected with Mirakuru, and while Felicity knew that people didn't just let go of their anger over night, Roy appeared to be benefitting from having another way to channel it.

Everything went downhill on Wednesday. The day had started badly when she'd woken to find that the power on her street had been knocked out during the night. Her water heater was electric, so no power meant a very short, very freezing shower. Then, ten minutes after said unpleasant shower, her power had come back on. Felicity had not been amused. When lunch rolled around, her supervisor at Tech Village had called to say that the store had been broken into and would be closed for the rest of the week to deal with insurance claims and inventory. That had actually been good news, until she realized that her paycheck would be almost nonexistent for the current pay period. All of that paled in comparison to Wednesday night, though.

A terrorist announced himself in the early evening by remotely detonating two improvised explosive devices simultaneously, on opposite sides of the city. Three people died.

Oliver freaked. Well, Oliver clenched his jaw and spent too many hours punching the wooden dummy and giving one-word responses to questions. Felicity only recognized it as his brand of freak out because she'd seen it so often over the years. She was better at reading him now, and he'd opened up more in the last year, so Felicity had a good grasp on what he was feeling. Where once everything had looked like anger to her, she could easily see what was underneath now: fear, and worry, and guilt. She also liked to think that Oliver didn't work as hard to hide those things from her anymore.

Which is why a prowling, tense Oliver didn't unnerve her as much as it had in the beginning (even when his prowling brought him over to growl questions at her).

Felicity managed to hold on to her own freak out until Thursday. Detective Lance hadn't asked for the Arrow's help, but they'd all collectively agreed that their help was a foregone conclusion in such a situation. Oliver had wanted to go the night it happened, but Digg had wisely pointed out that the scene would be crawling with police and news reporters. Oliver had begrudgingly agreed to wait until the following night. So, Thursday night, the guys had split up and gone to investigate the locations of the bombings: Digg and Roy went to one location, and Oliver went to the other. They relayed information back to Felicity in the lair in clipped sentences and terse voices.

The first IED had been left outside a public restroom in Starling City Park. Felicity listened to the information her team was exchanging with half of a mind as she hacked into the police department's computer servers. The identity of the victims had not been released on the news, but she found the reports quickly. She read the stats: Harriet Ealy, 49, divorced, owner of an independent coffee shop. Felicity studied Harriet Ealy's picture for a long moment. She committed the other woman's face and information to memory and then quietly vowed that they'd bring her killer to justice.

If the boys heard her, they didn't say anything.

Her throat felt too tight after that. There was a stinging behind her eyes that she fought to ignore, and she was doing a good job right up until the time Roy started speaking.

His voice was quiet and horrified. "There's a child's backpack here."

Felicity inhaled sharply. The second bomb had been left under a crosswalk light on a street in the outskirts of the Glades. She pulled up that report.

She tried not to sob. Her breathing was ragged over the line anyway. "David and …" she cleared her throat. "David and Daniel Slatton. Daniel was -. He, uh."

Felicity could not get the words out. She was staring at the pictures of father and son included in the police report and her eyes were swimming. The pressure in her chest left her breathless. A sob climbed its way out of her throat and she tried to swallow it at the last second.

"Felicity." Oliver's voice wobbled once and then smoothed out.

She heaved out a breath. "I'm fine. Just … let's just get this person. Bring me anything that has wires." They all knew that the odds of finding anything were slim. Whatever evidence had once been there had surely been gathered up by the police, but on the off chance that something had been missed, Felicity made sure they knew that she wanted it brought back.

The moment they told her they were headed back, Felicity pulled the ear bud from her ear and let go of the sob that had been trapped in her throat. A father and a son stared at her from motionless pictures on her computer screen and though she tried not to look at them, she didn't close out of the window. She put both elbows on the table, covered her face with her hands, and wept.

Felicity had forgotten to close the communication link. Oliver made the trip back with a muted string of Felicity's sobs in his ear, and if he drove his bike faster and more recklessly than was normal in his rush to get back to the lair, there was none the wiser.

He made it back before Digg and Roy. Felicity was barely visible behind her computer chair. She was hunched over and either hadn't heard him enter, or didn't care that he was there. Oliver put his bow back in the case without stopping, and only slowed when he was behind her. He noted that she wasn't sobbing anymore, but her hands were covering her face.

Oliver reached out tentatively, until his fingers grazed her upper arm and then dragged over her sleeve.

"Felicity."

"I'm sorry." Her voice was muffled behind her hands.

"Hey. Come here." Oliver wrapped his hand around her bicep and tugged gently. She dropped her hands away from red eyes but didn't look at him as she pushed her chair back and stood. She didn't bother to grab her glasses off of the table. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

Oliver pulled her into his chest. Felicity didn't protest, just pushed her nose into the leather and breathed in a mix of night air and him; she turned her head so that her cheek was against him as both of his arms wrapped around her. She closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat, focusing on the way the cool leather under her arms quickly warmed.

They didn't speak. For a long time there was no sound other than whirring computers and steady heartbeats, and that went a long way in calming her. When she finally heard footsteps moving down the stairs, she surprised herself by squeezing Oliver even tighter. He responded in kind, and she welcomed the pressure.

"I'm sorry, Felicity," Roy said quietly. "I shouldn't have said anything."

Felicity opened her eyes and focused them on Roy without moving. "I can take it."

"We know that," Digg answered quickly.

"I really hate this guy," she muttered lowly.

"We'll get him," Oliver assured her. His hand rubbed a circle against her back. Then, quietly to her, "Are you okay?"

Felicity nodded. When they finally released each other, she took a big breath and wiped her palms over the dry tear tracks on her cheeks.

"Do I look terrible?" She looked between Digg and Roy.

Digg grinned and stepped forward to drop a kiss into her hairline. "You never look terrible, Felicity."

She smiled brightly at him. "Thanks, Digg."

Oliver had turned to look at the computer monitors. The faces of a father and son stared back at him. He studied their pictures, committing them to memory, and wondered if Felicity had done the same thing. The memory of her sobs told him that it was more than likely. He didn't move until Felicity slid into her seat again, her back straight and her head held high.

"So, did you find anything to bring me?"

Roy set down a blackened mass of something in front of her. Whatever had been in the middle had melted and fused together in a way that made it unrecognizable, but that wasn't the part she was interested in: all Felicity cared about were the three pieces of wire that stuck out of the lump. She put her glasses back on in a rush and brought the object up to her face to study.

"Unfortunately," she started, "Anyone can buy wiring kits from anywhere. The wires themselves probably won't tell me much, unless they're a gauge that's too large or too small to be strictly common use, and I have no idea how to even begin to attempt identification of whatever this thing in the middle was, but maybe there's some way I can scrape some of this crap off and analyze the composite material …"

"Take a breath," Oliver interjected.

Felicity did so. She pulled air into her lungs until her chest hurt, counted to three, and then blew it out loudly. Then she nodded.

"Right. You guys go change. I'm gonna make coffee and get started on this."

Digg opened his mouth to protest, but Oliver stopped him with a curt shake of his head. He gave the other man a look that said he'd talk to her about the evils of overwork, but that they should give her some space for the time being. Whatever she said, Felicity was still clearly upset.

Felicity waited until her partners had cleared off to stand and move to the coffee pot. She wasn't exactly ashamed of her breakdown, because crying had never been something shameful to her, but she was worried that it seemed to be getting harder to not be emotional. First, there had been her outburst at Oliver over the events with Sara, and then tonight, she'd temporarily lost her ability to compartmentalize. That was not a good thing. She was a world-class compartmentalizer, and that was not an ability that she could afford to lose in their line of work.

Actually, she couldn't lose that ability ever, for any reason, because there was way too much stuff to compartmentalize.

Felicity brought the coffee can up to her nose and took a whiff of the coffee grounds: sharp, and a little bitter. The smell helped to anchor her, and there was a fleeting moment where she felt like she understood why the women of old days had carried smelling salts. Though smelling salts had probably been a lot stronger than coffee grounds.

She dropped the coffee filter into place and filled it on autopilot. The carafe was empty, so she carried it into the bathroom and filled it from the sink. The first time she'd made coffee in the new pot that she'd sent Roy to buy, Felicity hadn't thought to wonder whether the water in the building was potable. She was lucky that she hadn't gotten water poisoning.

Water poisoning probably wasn't even a thing. What happened to someone who drank non-potable water? Was it like having food poisoning, with all of the vomiting and other decidedly un-enjoyable effects? Why hadn't she worried about it before that moment? And, better still, if the water wasn't potable, what did Oliver drink? There was no way he could afford to buy cases of bottled water.

The carafe was overflowing. Felicity sighed and turned off the water. She dumped out the excess and carried it back to the waiting coffee pot. Her thoughts were disordered, and she blamed it on the crying. In some ways, crying was a release; but it was also a huge pain in the rear end, because crying had a way of making a mess inside her head. In the absence of whatever thoughts and emotions that crying cleared out, several hours – generally a whole night's worth – passed in which _all_ of her thoughts cleared out. When Felicity cried, her mind generally took that as an invitation to temporarily vacate the premises. As a little girl, Felicity had tried to describe the phenomenon to her mom, who had simply smiled and called it "fuzzy brain."

Nothing gave Felicity fuzzy brain like crying. Her mind was blank as she finished the coffee and then simply stood in front of the machine, listening to the quiet gurgles of the water as it was heated. Then, because apparently her brain was cruel when it was overworked, she remembered that Harriet Ealy had owned an independent coffee shop. Had she been passionate about coffee, Felicity wondered, or had she chosen to open a coffee shop for another reason? What would happen to that coffee shop now? Was there a family member somewhere that would inherit it?

Just like that, her thoughts blanked out again. Her brain seemed unable to decide whether or not it was overworked enough to go full fuzzy brain on her, and that was frustrating. In a way, Felicity would have welcomed a complete lack of thoughts; in another, she knew that she was not done for the night, and couldn't afford said thoughtlessness.

"Staring at the coffee pot won't make it go any faster." Oliver stepped into the space next to her. His bicep brushed against her shoulder and stayed there.

"I was just telling myself that fuzzy brain will have to wait," Felicity explained. Her voice wasn't as animated as it usually was.

"Fuzzy brain?" Oliver queried, glancing down at her.

Felicity nodded before turning to meet his eyes over her shoulder. He had showered, his green leather ensemble traded in for a long sleeved V-neck shirt in dark blue. She could see a sliver of the white t-shirt he wore underneath at the bottom of this throat.

"Fuzzy brain," she repeated. "It's when you cry, and I mean really cry not just one or two tears that get out before you can stop them, and then your mind just goes blank after. My mom used to say that it was because your brain had been so busy thinking so many things that it just … made everything too fuzzy to focus on for awhile."

"Because it just needs a break." Oliver's voice was almost a whisper.

Felicity nodded absently. The coffee level in the carafe had stopped rising and there was no more gurgling, so she figured it was done. Before she could reach out to grab her cup, though, Oliver turned into the space between her and the coffee pot. His face was drawn and his blue eyes were intense as he looked at her.

"Felicity, if you need a break …"

"What?" she interrupted, fixing her eyes on his face. "No. I don't need a break, Oliver." He raised his eyebrows in response, so she backtracked a little. "Well, I mean, we all need a break, but I don't need one specifically. At least, not right now. Right now, all I need is an IV drip of coffee so I can catch this guy."

Oliver sighed. He wanted to get this guy as badly as she did, but he could also see how tired she was. Her dependence on coffee worried him, not because it was unhealthy, but because he wondered how often she used it to keep herself awake until the small hours of the morning. While he made an effort not to overwork his team, there was no way he could change the fact that it was hard to come down here and do this work night after night. The stress of routinely facing down life and death situations was nothing to laugh at.

In the time it had taken him to think those things, Felicity had stepped around him and helped herself to a cup of coffee so full he was certain it would spill as soon as she moved. He followed her back to her chair, and didn't fail to notice that she didn't spill a drop.

Felicity sat down, took a drink of her coffee, and then fought to swallow it instead of spit it out.

"I totally just burnt my tongue," she almost whined. "That's just cruel." She looked forlornly down at her cup. "You're my one true love, coffee, why would you do that? Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal."

Oliver chuckled lowly behind her. When she looked up at him, he was shaking his head and his lips were quirked.

"That was a very interesting sentence."

"I can't take all the credit. That last part was from one of my favorite shows, Firefly."

"I've never heard of that one."

"I'm not surprised. The network cancelled it after one season, which pissed a lot of people off. The fandom for it is still huge, though."

"The … what?" Oliver asked.

Felicity opened her mouth to answer, then shook her head. "I mean, a lot of people still really love it."

She picked up the melted mass of whatever it was that they had brought back. Felicity turned it over in her hands as she studied it. Would it even be worth it to try and scrape some flakes off of the surface? She wasn't sure what it had been in the first place, so would she even be able to identify the particulates? Maybe there was still something recognizable underneath, and the charred husk could be chipped away completely.

Oliver stood behind her until Digg called his name. He turned to find the other man standing at the bottom of the stairs, Roy at his side.

"If you need me to, I'll stay," John started. "But Lyla and I have a baby appointment in the morning that I'd rather not miss if I don't have to."

Oliver clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Go home, Diggle. I'll make sure Felicity is okay. And tell us how the appointment goes."

Diggle nodded and called out a goodbye to Felicity, who answered without looking. The other man gave Oliver a pointed look that clearly conveyed his worry, and then disappeared up the stairs.

"I'm gonna do the same, if it's okay," Roy said.

Oliver nodded. "Get some sleep."

He turned back to Felicity when he heard the door close for the last time. He watched her as he approached, taking in the way her shoulders were hunched and how she kept rolling them every so often, as if they were bothering her. Oliver wasn't surprised; she spent hours staring at those computers day in and day out, and even though Felicity generally had great posture, she was bound to get sore after a while.

Oliver grabbed another chair and rolled it next to hers; when his eyes fell on her coffee cup, he was alarmed to discover that it was already half empty.

He sat down next to her. He couldn't write code or work computers the way she could, but maybe there was something he could do to help ensure that Felicity went to bed at a (semi) decent hour.

"How can I help?" he offered.

"Well, that depends. How good are you with your hands?" She didn't even give him a chance to answer. "That is what I meant to say, but I didn't mean it to sound so … sexual. But, well, whatever. My question stands."

Oliver took a breath and swallowed before answering. As much as he'd like to assure her that his mind hadn't immediately dived into the gutter at her words, he couldn't, because that's exactly what it had done. To his confusion and mild bewilderment, his mind had not only jumped into the gutter, it had also taken Felicity with it. He was usually good at skipping right over her verbal gaffes, but that one had him suddenly imagining what it would be like to _show_ Felicity how good he was with his hands.

Which was not remotely the sort of thing he should be thinking.

"I'm decent," Oliver finally answered, though his voice sounded a little off in his ears. There was also a bit of a pause between his words, because decent was not the first qualifier that had come to mind.

"I probably should have known that," Felicity rambled absently, more to herself than to him. "You're an archer who makes his own arrows and stitches up his own wounds, of course you're good with your hands." Then, looking at him, "I want to see if we can chip away at the outer layers. There might be something helpful underneath. I'm just not sure what we have around here that's sharp enough to be useful, but small enough that it's easy to control."

Oliver stood up without a word and crossed the room to retrieve two arrowheads. They had not been paired with shafts yet, so they were small enough that they'd fit easily in her hand, and still sharp. When he handed one to her, her eyes lit up.

"This will work perfectly. But before we start – more coffee." She grabbed her cup and stepped away.

"Felicity, it's almost one a.m. How will you sleep if you down a pot of coffee?"

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," she called back to him. Then he heard her mutter, "And maybe not even then."

Oliver decided then and there that he wasn't above spiking her drink if it was the only way he could make sure she got some sleep.


	9. The Power of Touch

_**Author's Note: so, this chapter is shorter than the last few. Sorry about that, but I just felt like it should end where it did. Anyway, I included the dream in the beginning because I actually had that dream - complete with all of the characters involved. It was the strangest thing ever, and it totally fit into this chapter, so I couldn't resist adding it. I hope you guys like this installment, and I look forward to hearing what you think!**_

* * *

The snow crunched under Felicity's feet despite how tightly packed it was. Her breath misted in front of her, so she tucked her chin down into her scarf and surveyed the wall of people some hundred feet in front of her.

"I can't believe we're doing this," she said.

"I think it's great," Roy quipped.

"What I mean is, this was never something I saw myself doing."

A shoulder bumped into hers and she glanced up at the man next to her. Oliver was grinning.

"Just think," he teased. "When we finish, we'll all have to start calling you Iron Woman."

"Don't tell her that," Digg groused. "She has plenty of nicknames as it is."

Felicity was going to fire off a retort when laughter and shrill screams drew her attention behind her. She stopped walking to watch the antics of the people behind them. Two modified bikes with skis instead of wheels were racing over the snow. Each one had a rider who was responsible for pedaling, and behind the rider was another person standing tall on pegs that stuck out from the rear wheels. The two people standing were yelling insults at each other and cajoling their riders. There were two rows of brightly painted signs that stretched down the road and out of sight. The riders aimed at their designated row, knocking the signs over as they went. The closer the weird bikes got to Felicity, the clearer she could read the signs: "hope", "responsibility", and "love" were knocked flat as she watched.

"That's new," Felicity said to herself. Then, glancing at her friends, "Since when were bikes allowed in the Ironman competition?"

"Felicity."

"For that matter, why would they have the competition in the middle of winter, with six feet of snow on the ground?"

"Felicity."

Felicity opened her eyes slowly. There was a burning sensation behind them, so she blinked several times and then realized she wasn't wearing her glasses. That wasn't right – she didn't remember taking them off. She didn't even remember going to bed. She was in bed though, right?

Oliver's face came into focus just above hers. He looked tired, but alert. He was smiling at her.

"Oliver? Am I late for work?"

Felicity pushed herself up onto her elbow. The material beneath shifted and gave way slightly. She glanced down at pale sheets that she couldn't immediately place, because her sheets were a deep red.

"You were talking in your sleep," Oliver said gently. "Something about the Ironman competition having bikes?"

"What? I was?"

Felicity's brain refused to work. All she wanted was to go back to sleep; a few more hours would do the trick. Or, well, twenty-four hours, maybe. She tucked her elbow back into her side and flopped down on the pillow, turning her nose into the softness of it and closing her eyes.

"I mean, the bikes were weird, right? Who puts skis on bikes? Or, for that matter, who thought it was a good idea to have an Ironman in the snow?"

She took a deep breath. The smell that came with it was different than she expected: it wasn't the sweet smell of her shampoo, or the clean smell of her laundry detergent. She scrunched up her nose and furrowed her brow. She knew that smell. Why did she know that smell? Sandalwood, and soap, and something … Oliver.

Felicity's eyes shot open and she hurriedly pushed herself up on one arm again. Oliver was standing quietly in front of her, one corner of his mouth turned up in bemusement. She looked down. Sure enough, she was in his bed, the sheets and blanket pooled around her waist from her hasty movement. When she turned her eyes up to Oliver again, she offered him a sheepish grin.

"I fell asleep, didn't I?"

"At about three," Oliver informed her. "Though I don't know how, with two pots of coffee in your system."

Felicity sighed and ran a hand over her hair. She'd fallen asleep with it in a ponytail and could feel the wisps of hair that fallen down around her face, and the loose, crooked mess it had become. She reached up with the hand that wasn't bracing her and tugged the hair band the rest of the way out of her hair.

"You should have left me at the desk," she admonished Oliver. Then, looking at him again, "You haven't slept, have you?"

Oliver had shut half of the overhead lights off, probably in an effort to help her sleep. Even in the half-lighting his eyes looked a shade too dark, and he was standing right up against the edge of his bed. Felicity hadn't noticed how close he was standing before.

"I was not going to let you sleep hunched over a table," he murmured. Even in the open space of the lair, with the hum of her computers like a lullaby in the air, his voice sounded intimate. "Your shoulders have been bothering you enough as it is."

She huffed. "I think I pinched a nerve under my shoulder blade ag … wait. How did you know that?"

Oliver smiled. "I'm observant. Which shoulder blade?" He stepped around the bed.

"Uh, what?"

"Sit up, and tell me which shoulder blade." He placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a little push to get her to move. She rolled off her hip and onto her butt, tucking her legs around each other and sitting up straight.

"Left."

Oliver's hands were large and warm through the fabric of her shirt. He found the bottom ridge of her shoulder blade easily, and then his thumbs started to dig and slide over the muscles. Felicity's breath left her quickly, even as her brain told her that this was a bad idea. She had always felt something for Oliver – something she was loathe to name, because that would not help the situation in any way – but lately she had noticed that it was getting worse. In fact, something had changed in her that night Oliver had told her he loved her in his abandoned mansion. Felicity had tried to ignore whatever was happening, but it was starting to feel impossible. Oliver hadn't changed, exactly, but she had picked up on a lightness in him that hadn't existed pre-Slade Wilson. He smiled more now. He seemed … more accessible. No, that wasn't right, because he had always been accessible to her. Responsive was what she meant; Oliver was more responsive now, to everyone, but especially to her.

That responsiveness had only increased after their not-double-date-double-date.

Even though her brain was putting up warning flags, Felicity firmly pushed them away. She deserved a nice massage, and that spot in her shoulder was really bothering her.

One of Oliver's thumbs dug into the spot where the pinched nerve was hiding. Felicity exhaled loudly and arched her back a little. The pressure immediately lessened.

"Did I hurt you?"

"No," she answered. "That's the spot that hurts."

Oliver's arm appeared just below her chin and wrapped around until his hand was resting on her other shoulder. He laid it gently across her chest, just below her throat, and pulled her back carefully.

"Lean back," he instructed as he did so. The hand that was working into the sore spot didn't move, so as she did as he said the pressure increased. Felicity's heart did a somersault when she realized his hip was pressed into her back.

The hand that was resting on her shoulder started massaging the muscles there as well. The longer the massage went on, the more Felicity started to droop against his arm. He could feel the rise and fall of her chest slow down and even out, until Oliver was certain that she'd fallen asleep again.

Oliver worked his way up Felicity's back in circles. At one point, the long strands of her hair kept getting caught under his hand, so he brushed it over her shoulder and out of his way. The pads of his fingers brushed over the nape of her neck, and she shivered against him. He had to hold his breath and count to ten before he could continue.

"You never answered me," Felicity whispered at some point. "Did you get any sleep at all?"

"A few hours."

"Where?"

"The training mats."

Felicity tipped her head back. She was too busy glaring at him to pay attention to the fact that her head had come to rest against his chest, or that the elevated bed brought her much closer to him despite not actually being on her feet.

"You carried me to _your_ bed and then slept on the _training mats_?"

Oliver couldn't concentrate on the way she was scowling at him. He'd seen Felicity irritated with him enough to know her expression by heart, but his eyes kept gravitating to the pale column of her throat. He was acutely aware of every point of contact between their bodies, and no less aware of how much more he craved.

Felicity had barely stirred when he picked her up out of that chair. He'd been halfway to his bed when she turned her head into his chest and breathed out a sigh that coasted over the hollow of his throat. He hadn't put her down immediately. Oliver had told himself that he was trying to decide how best to put her down without waking her, but the little voice in his head called him out on the lie. He'd stood next to his bed and held her longer than necessary because he'd wanted to be close to her. Truthfully, ever since he'd spent endless minutes listening to her crying quietly earlier that night, Oliver had had a hard time not pulling her against him and keeping her there for the rest of the night.

Now, looking down into Felicity's upturned face, her blonde hair splashed against his blue shirt, Oliver felt that rock that had dislodged in his chest settle more deeply into the depression that had been created for it. In his mind he heard Felicity asking him if he'd ever been with someone who made him as happy as Lyla made John, and the longer that he studied her sweet face, the more certain Oliver became that the only person who could ever make him that happy was the one currently glaring at him.

"The mats aren't as uncomfortable as you think." Oliver's answer was late, but Felicity didn't mind.

"That's no excuse."

"What was all that stuff about bikes on skis?"

"You're trying to distract me."

"Humor me."

Felicity was distracted from answering by the slide of Oliver's arm across the top of her chest as he pulled his arm away. She didn't have time to protest before his hands settled on the tops of both shoulders and began to knead the muscles there.

"I was dreaming," she explained. "We – that is, you, and me, and Digg, and Roy – were at an Ironman competition. Only there was, like, six feet of snow on the ground, and people on these weird bikes that had skis instead of tires and … it was really weird." She smiled. "Dream you told me that if I finished the race, you'd all have to call me Iron Woman, and Dream Digg got mad because I apparently don't need another nickname."

Oliver's chuckle was a vibration against the back of her head. "Dream Digg was right. You've started a collection."

Felicity smiled. Her stomach chose that moment to grumble loudly, and her smile turned sheepish. "I don't think I've eaten since lunch yesterday. What time is it? And where are my glasses?"

Oliver checked the clock as he leaned over to retrieve her glasses and hand them to her. "Eleven."

"What? Seriously?" Felicity crowed. "Oliver, why didn't you wake me? I have, like, a bazillion searches going so we can find this bomber guy and I have to see if I can find anything out about whatever that thing was that you guys brought back and -."

"Felicity."

She stopped mid-rant and was startled to realize that she was now standing, barefoot on the cement floor, on the other side of the bed from Oliver. He didn't seem at all perturbed, though both of his arms had dropped down to brace him against the edge of the bed that she had so recently occupied. Felicity didn't want to admit that she found the stance remarkably sexy.

Out of bed and standing three inches shorter than usual in front of Oliver made Felicity painfully aware of the fact that she'd just passed the last hour (at least) pressed against his chest while he gave her a massage. She tugged nervously on the fingers of one hand with the other hand and looked away from him. Her hair fell over her shoulder. Felicity made an effort not to think about how terrible she must look in yesterday's rumpled clothes, and with hair disheveled from sleep. Her make up didn't even bear thinking of. She flexed her toes against the cold cement, an old habit, and had the forethought to wonder where her shoes had gone. When she looked, she spied them resting on their sides beneath the computer table.

She had taken her shoes off, right? Waking up in Oliver's bed, surrounded by the smell that Felicity attributed solely to him, and then spending what was definitely way too long pressed against him had been intimate enough as it was. In fact, not only had she been pressed against him, he'd given her a freaking _massage_. That was totally weird, because she and Oliver had a thing about touching each other: every once in awhile she might squeeze his hand, or he might put a hand on her shoulder, but that was all. Until very recently, apparently, because now that she thought about it they had shared several touches in the recent past. The point was, Felicity wasn't sure how her feeble heart would take the knowledge that Oliver had taken the time to slip off her heels before carrying her to his bed. The damn thing was already in enough trouble where the man in front of her was concerned.

In an attempt to stave off her thoughts, and the (entirely too thrilling) way that Oliver was looking at her, Felicity blurted out, "Thank you. For taking me to bed." She groaned. "Putting me in bed. Whatever. And the massage. My shoulder feels better."

"Good."

Oliver could have been blind and he still would have seen her trepidation clearly. Felicity was broadcasting her uncertainty in the way she kept tugging at her fingers, and he didn't blame her. In some ways, he had surprised himself as much as he had her. He hadn't intended to give her a massage, but she'd made that crack about sleeping at the computers and his mind had cast back to the way she'd kept rolling her shoulders all night. He'd insisted that he handle the chipping away at the husk, but even then Felicity had sat right next to him and punched in search after search.

Maybe the lack of sleep had taken down one too many of Oliver's carefully constructed barriers. He had slept on the training mats for a few hours, but he'd already been awake when she'd started to talk in her sleep. Seeing her in his bed had tugged at his heartstrings. So maybe the massage had been going a little overboard, but one minute he'd been listening to her say something about weird bikes and watching her bury her nose in his pillow, and the next minute he'd wanted nothing more than to touch her. So he had done just that.

That might not have been his best idea. Well, privately he thought that it was up there on the list of his best ideas, but that didn't mean that Felicity thought so as well. Oliver had just had the thought to apologize when her stomach growled again.

Felicity gave him a smile that was both contrite and adorable.

Oh, he had to be tired, because he never used the word adorable. Not even for Felicity, and not even if it was true.

"You should eat something," Oliver said then.

Felicity's stomach made another noise, and she wrinkled her nose. "And shower," she added. "I probably look terrible."

"You look beautiful."

The words just sort of fell off of his tongue before he could catch them. Oliver meant them, of course, because it was true: everything about Felicity, from the curled toes of one foot to the tumble of golden hair over her shoulders, was beautiful. He meant the words, but he wasn't certain that he should have said them.

Felicity tipped her head to one side. Oliver looked as though he hadn't meant to say that out loud, or maybe like he hadn't realized that he was going to say the words until they were out. Still, his expression was sincere, and his eyes were watching her in a way that sent a shiver up her spine. Whether or not he'd meant what he said in the way she wanted him to, Felicity didn't doubt that he believed the words.

"Thank you," she answered softly. "Though I'm not sure how beautiful anyone really looks after waking up after a night of crying and staying up too late."

Her words had the desired effect: Oliver smiled.

"Go home." His voice was gentle. "Eat. Don't rush back. I'll text you if any of your searches find anything."

Oliver stepped around the bed and watched her slip her shoes back on and gather her stuff. He tried to tamp down on his pride when he noted that her movements didn't seem as stiff as they had been the day before. Whether or not he should have touched her, she had apparently benefited from his ministrations. Then, just like that, Oliver remembered the way she had touched his leg that night they'd gone out to dinner. He thought of the gentle pressure of her hand against him, and his certainty that she had branded him with that touch. Had he had the same effect on her just now, maybe? Would she be able to forget about what his hands felt like against her body?

He shook his head; because that was definitely not something he should be thinking about. Oliver was obviously tired, and touching Felicity had done strange things to him. Like make him want to touch her again.

"I'll be back later." Felicity's voice drew him out of his thoughts. "Tell me the moment those computers make a sound."

Oliver nodded. "I will."

She took a step toward him and looked very much like she wanted to reach out and put a hand on his arm. She changed her mind at the last second. "Get some sleep, okay?"

"Okay."

"Promise?"

"Felicity," he chided, but there was no irritation in his tone. He was amused, in an exasperated sort of way. "How can I tell you if your searches find something if I'm asleep?"

The IT genius barely had to think that one over. "Sleep is more important." Then her stomach growled again.

"Food is important."

Felicity pulled a face at him before grumbling something about grumpy vigilantes and heading for the stairs. Oliver watched her go without moving and tried not to smile at how stubborn she could be. Just last night she'd insisted on drinking two pots of coffee and telling him that she could sleep when she was dead, and then she'd turned right around and chided him for not promising to go to sleep as soon as she left. Granted, Oliver doubted that smiling was the normal response to such stubbornness, but he found that he couldn't help it.

Even more infuriating than her contradictions was the fact that, without her presence, Oliver finally had to admit that he was exhausted. The hum of the computers was more pronounced now that he was alone. The sound was relaxing, and only accentuated the hours of sleep that he had not gotten.

Oliver managed to last for ten minutes after Felicity left. Ten minutes, and then he crossed to the bed Felicity had so recently occupied and practically fell into it face first.

His heart fluttered painfully when he realized that the pillow smelled like both of them.


	10. Not Your Average Food Fight

_**Author's Note: so who else thinks that The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak was the best episode of Arrow ever?! It was so perfect! This damn ship is gonna kill me, guys. Thank god for fanfic - I gotta have something to get me through this season. Anyway, thank you to everyone who has read/reviewed/favorited this work. I hope you enjoy this chapter!**_

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Oliver had learned a long time ago how to move silently. Yao Fei had taught him how to fight for survival; Slade had taught him how to fight, how to move quickly and gracefully enough to defend his life; and Shado had helped him perfect the lessons he'd learned from her father. Oliver had taken all of those lessons, all of those things that the people that had been better than him had taught him, and refined them until they were weapons. He was a superior archer, and a fierce fighter, and a man who could walk without making a sound.

Oliver was using that ability to move silently at that very moment – to spy on his friends. Well, not spy, exactly; he wasn't hiding, and if either of them turned around they'd see him immediately. He hoped that they wouldn't, though, because from time to time he liked to listen to the conversations they had when they thought he wasn't around. Digg and Felicity had an easy relationship, one that he sometimes envied, and watching or listening to them interact had a strange way of lifting Oliver's spirits. Digg and Felicity reminded him of what friendship was supposed to look like, in a world where he wasn't the vigilante and didn't have to be separate from basic human relationships. In some ways, they even reminded him of the relationship he used to share with Tommy, or Thea.

"Where did you put my Pad Thai?" Felicity asked. Her head turned from one side to the other, blonde ponytail swaying as she did so.

"Your Pad Thai?" Diggle answered. "You didn't get Pad Thai, Felicity. I did."

"I always get Pad Thai! It's my favorite! And I've officially said that so many times it's starting to sound weird. Seriously, though, Digg. Hand it over."

"Seriously. You didn't get any."

Felicity snorted and leaned forward over the desk to look passed Digg. She scanned the takeout containers in front of her, and then looked back to the ones that her friend had set on the other side of him.

"Digg, I'm the one that called in the order, and I've made it a thousand times. Well, Roy's order was new, but still. I know that you have my food." She held up her chopsticks and clicked them together. "It's dangerous to keep me from my food."

Oliver watched Digg grin. "I'm terrified." He handed her the container next to him anyway.

Felicity made a happy, high-pitched sound and shimmied her shoulders in excitement as she plunged her chopsticks into the waiting dish.

Oliver smiled as he watched. Their latest mission still noticeably bothered Felicity, and she kept yelling at her computers under her breath about how they were failing her, but she did appear to be in a better mood. Though Oliver had told her not to hurry back when she'd left that afternoon, she had returned earlier than he'd expected. Felicity had also brought them all food, which was thoughtful. Seeing her with the bags of Thai food in hand had made him smile and think of the way her stomach had been grumbling the last time he'd seen her.

Diggle had arrived as Oliver was helping her unpack the takeout containers. The other man's timing was so perfect that Oliver had thought maybe Felicity had called him. Though Roy hadn't magically appeared, and she would have called him as well if she'd called Digg. Maybe his ex-bodyguard just had impeccable timing.

"You have a noodle hanging out of your mouth," Digg teased. "Did it try to run away or what?"

Felicity held up a finger in the air between them, and then angled it down to point menacingly at him. "I was a little over zealous," she mumbled.

Oliver finally stepped forward, unable to resist the draw of sharing the moment with his friends any longer.

"All right," he said, pulling up a chair on the other side of Felicity. "Which one is mine?"

"Careful, Digg might try to claim it for himself," Felicity warned.

"No I wouldn't," Digg said quickly. "He got that weird chicken thing again."

"Weird chicken thing?" Oliver repeated.

"Oh, yeah, it is kinda weird," Felicity agreed. She gave him an apologetic look. "To be fair, I think it's the texture of the noodles."

"What's weird?" Roy asked from some distance away. His footsteps were loud on the stairs.

"Oliver's Thai food," Felicity answered, turning to smile at Roy. "Grab a chair, your food's right here."

"Guess I won't be sharing my food with you again," Oliver quipped.

"Hollow threats, Mr. Queen, hollow threats."

Felicity was grinning at him. Oliver tried to keep his face impassive and level her with his best glare, even as she darted out the hand that held her chopsticks and snatched up a piece of his chicken. They were already sitting close to each other, but the movement brought her close enough that Oliver could smell her perfume; he recognized it as the same one that still clung to the sheets of his bed. That smell had permeated his dreams in ways that were anything but platonic. He had slept better than he expected, but woken reaching for the woman who now sat next to him.

Felicity popped the piece of chicken into her mouth triumphantly. Her victory was overshadowed when her face contorted strangely.

"Still weird," she said after she'd swallowed. "Maybe it's the sauce."

Her words pulled Oliver from his thoughts before they could go any farther. Which, if the look Digg was giving him over Felicity's shoulder was anything to go by, was a good thing, because something of them must have shown in his expression.

Roy flopped unceremoniously into a chair on the opposite side of Digg. He reached for his designated takeout container, said a sincere thank you to Felicity, and then dug in.

Some time passed in near silence as they ate. Every few minutes Felicity would check on her various search programs, tweaking them here and there with quick keystrokes before returning to her food. Without a word, she offered some of her Pad Thai to Digg in exchange for a bite of whatever he'd gotten; when they'd managed the trade-off, she made the same offer to Roy.

Intense warmth spread like wildfire through Oliver's chest. The sensation came on suddenly, springing to life as he watched the amiable and wordless exchange of food take place. There was familiarity here, and comfort, and it meant more to Oliver than he could say. Felicity had told Roy that they were a family, and that he was part of it now, and Oliver felt the truth of those words in his bones. These people were more than just his team, or his partners: these were the people that Slade had tried, and failed, to take away from him.

Robert and Moira Queen were dead; Tommy, and Shado, they were dead as well; and Thea was halfway across the world, without him. Despite all of those things, Oliver was still surrounded by people he loved, and who loved him. No matter how the rest of the world saw him – or couldn't see him – down here, he did not have to hide. People like Slade Wilson kept trying to separate them, to destroy the family that Oliver had built by happy accident, and they kept failing.

For all that he had lost, and his inability to see past those losses sometimes, he had also gained something …

Felicity held her Pad Thai out to him, shaking the container a little as if to entice him.

… Remarkable.

Oliver fished some of her noodles out of her container and into his.

"You can keep your weird chicken," she stage whispered to him.

The computer pinged. Felicity jumped on the sound so fast Oliver thought some of the keys might fly off the keyboard.

"Finally!" She did a fist pump and then shook her head. "I have really got to stop doing that."

"What do you have?" Oliver asked.

"Well, since there was nothing usable under the eighty layers of charred husk you chipped off of that thing last night, I just started searching for any purchases of questionable items in the last month. Ya know, anything that seemed a little weird, like bulk purchases of wires or wiring harnesses, or too much bleach, lighter fluid – anything."

"And?"

"And, this." Felicity pointed to one screen. "Is a police report. A convenience store reported a robbery two weeks ago. Apparently, someone stole roughly five gallons of gas."

"Felicity, that happens almost every day," Diggle pointed out.

"True, but gas wasn't all that was stolen. The thief also took a few liters of lighter fluid. Then, this police report." She pointed to a different screen. "Was filed about another robbery that took place on the other side of the city, at almost the exact same time. Only guess what was taken?"

"More gasoline?" Roy offered.

Felicity nodded. "As well as a pair of wire strippers, a common household cleaner, and a roll of speaker wire. Now, I've never tried to make a homemade bomb, but does anyone else think it's strange that both of these robberies happened on the same night, at almost exactly the same time? I mean, this doesn't sound like your usual pre-teens making a late night beer run."

"So there are two bombers." Oliver's face was grim as he stared at the reports on the computer. The only thing worse than one terrorist in the city was two.

"Maybe," Felicity hedged. "Though if there are two of them, it's possible that only one of them actually knows how to make a bomb."

"So a bomber, and an accomplice?" Digg didn't sound any happier than Oliver felt. "That's great, but it doesn't tell us anything other than how many of them there are."

"It doesn't even tell us that," Roy piped up. "Just that there are at least two of them. For all we know, there's a whole terrorist club."

Oliver physically felt Felicity tense next to him. Her good mood disappeared instantly, and she opened her mouth to fire off what would undoubtedly be an angry retort. He knew that neither Digg nor Roy had meant to imply that the information was useless, just like he knew that Felicity would take their comments personally. She had stayed up as late as she could last night, after all, because she'd been so determined to catch this guy.

Before she could snap at the other two, Oliver put his hand over her forearm. Felicity turned her head sharply to look at him and he could see the anger – and hurt – clearly reflected in her eyes.

"Hey." He made sure the word was as soothing as he could make it. "That's more than we knew before. You're on the right track."

The angry retort died on her lips. Felicity blew out a breath, her shoulders visibly sagging, and she nodded once. Oliver rubbed his thumb over the side of her arm reassuringly.

"Did those stores have security cameras?"

The question did what he'd hoped and rerouted her attention to the computers. When Oliver took his hand away from her arm, he caught Digg giving him an appraising look. Which he promptly ignored.

"Since the police reports give me an exact date and approximate time, all I have to do is hack into their security systems and download the footage so I can scrub it. Assuming that they still have the footage anyway. It might take me a bit though, so if you guys are done eating, would you mind giving me some space?"

"Sure," Digg replied.

They cleared away the food containers and then left Felicity alone with the computers. Oliver told Roy to grab his bow so they could get in some target practice and work on his reflexes. As soon as the kid had moved away – Oliver would probably always think of Roy as a kid – Digg stepped into the space next to him.

"Everything okay?" he asked lowly.

Oliver knew that Digg was asking about Felicity and thought about playing dumb. Instead, he shrugged one shoulder. "You guys upset her. She's taking this one pretty hard."

"She's not the only one."

Oliver glanced at the man next to him. "I know."

Roy returned with his bow. Digg didn't follow as Oliver led the kid over the far corner of the room where they had set up a three-D target. Felicity had ordered it for them when she got sick of Roy planting arrows in everything except what he was aiming at. Thankfully, the kid's aim had improved greatly since then.

Oliver mostly watched as Roy fired arrow after arrow. Occasionally he'd call out a flaw in Roy's stance, or a last minute change to the area he wanted the kid to hit just to see how quickly he could adapt. He caught on quickly, and he was definitely improving, but he was still slow on the draw. Oliver had him spend a good ten minutes just reaching behind him to grab an arrow and knock it as fast as he could without actually firing. He wanted Roy to get comfortable with where his quiver sat and what angle the arrows were at. The kid needed to be able to grab an arrow and knock it instinctively; he needed to know exactly where everything was, and perform the motion so many times that it came as easily to him as breathing. The speed would only come with the confidence of knowing that the bow and quiver were an extension of him.

When he was assured that Roy was taking the exercise seriously, Oliver left him and joined Digg for some sparring.

There was clarity of mind that came with sparring that was sometimes hard to find otherwise. Oliver didn't stop thinking when he was facing off with the other man; it was more that his thoughts became more linear, and were easier to follow from one subject to the next. The physical exertion was as beneficial for his mind as it was for his body.

For her part, Felicity didn't hear the chorus of grunts that came from the training mats. She didn't hear the twang of Roy's bow either. Her world had narrowed down to the computer screens in front of her and the lines of information they displayed. The security systems for the convenience stores were easy to get into, and she had both videos playing in no time. She chose which one to start with arbitrarily.

Felicity poured over the videos with single-minded determination. She extrapolated what information she could about the thieves, like approximate height and weight, and then started a search on the third monitor. The search parameters were still too vague, and since there was no way to guarantee that the perpetrators had any kind of previous criminal record, she set it to search passports and the entire DMV database. Then, she went back to the videos and looked for a way to narrow down the search.

There was a full can of coffee in Felicity's purse. She had bought it on her way back to the lair that evening and vowed that she would drink the entire thing if that was what it took to find the person who was responsible for the deaths of those three people. There didn't seem to be a method or reason behind the bombings, and that scared her. Psychos who destroyed things or killed people just for the enjoyment it gave them were the scariest kind, in Felicity's experience. They had to catch the culprit before anyone else got hurt. Daniel and David Slatton, and Harriet Ealy, deserved justice. Felicity would forego sleep without complaint if it meant that the people of Starling City didn't have to worry about being blown up on some street corner.

When she'd been through the in-store footage of the robberies two dozen or so times, Felicity retrieved the footage from the parking lots and front doors and started going through that. She'd watch a chunk of the footage and then rewind it, focus on some new part of the video, and then watch it again. Over and over again she did it, until the pounding in her temples became so loud and harsh that her eyes started to cross.

"Take a break."

Felicity looked away from the computer monitors and up into Digg's familiar face. He had stripped down to a tank top for his sparring session with Oliver, and she was reminded of how ridiculously huge his arms were. Digg was undoubtedly the sweetest man she knew, but he was not a man she would want to meet in a dark alley. She was enormously glad that he was on her side. Or was she on his side? Either way, Felicity was grateful that they were on the same side.

"Right," she said as she stood. "Break time it is."

Felicity headed straight for the coffee pot. Diggle's footfalls were heavy behind her.

"Break wasn't a code word for coffee."

"Sure it was," Felicity retorted lightly. "Everything is a code word for coffee."

"Felicity -."

"Digg." She shot him a pointed glare before setting to work on making a pot of coffee.

"You won't help anyone by running yourself into the ground."

"Then it's a good thing I'm not running myself into the ground, isn't it?" Her tone was dry and curt.

Digg didn't miss the silent warning to let the subject drop. He waved at it as it passed and then forged ahead. "It looks to me like that's exactly what you're doing. Did you even go home last night?"

Felicity didn't answer. Someone had been kind enough to fill the carafe full of water for her and leave it next to the pot, so all she had to do was pour it in and replace the filter. She concentrated on her movements as if she had never made a pot of coffee before.

"That's what I thought," Digg grumbled. He crossed his arms over his chest. "You don't need coffee, Felicity, you need a full night of sleep. You need to take care of yourself."

"I need to find whoever is leaving bombs all over the city," Felicity snapped. "That's my job, John. That's what I do. I find the bad guys – who they are, where they are, what they're doing and how to stop them. I find them, and the rest of you go get them. You can't do your part until I do mine, and no one else is going to die because I decided that sleep was more important than the information that could have saved their lives."

"That's my point." Digg kept his voice even as he took a step closer. "There are three of us, and only one you. If Oliver gets hurt, Roy and I can step in and do the job for him. But you're irreplaceable, Felicity. None of us can do what you do."

"And that's why I can't sleep, Digg." Felicity turned away from the coffee pot to fix her attention on her friend. The headache behind her eyes was fierce and made her feel irritable. Digg wasn't wrong, because it was barely past nine in the evening and she could have lain down on the cement floor at that very moment and slept for the next seven days straight. But she could not, and would not, do that. "I have to find this guy. Girl. These people. Ugh, whatever. I promise, when this is all over, I will lock myself in my house and sleep for a month, okay? Just … just let me do this first."

Digg forgot, sometimes, how alike Oliver and Felicity were. She understood herself and her limits better than he did, but never hesitated to stomp all over them when it was necessary. Digg couldn't tell who was rubbing off on whom more; every time he thought Oliver had learned one of Felicity's healthier habits, she turned right around and presented her own version of one of Oliver's less than healthy habits. They were quite a pair, especially since they weren't really a pair at all. Not the way that Digg knew they both wanted to be.

John Diggle was convinced that he was the only person in the basement with a lick of sense.

"Okay," Digg agreed grudgingly. "But, just so you know, I don't like it."

Felicity offered him a small smile. "Noted."

Digg left her to her coffee brewing. Oliver was standing a few feet away, close enough to have heard everything but far enough away to give the illusion of privacy. He arched an eyebrow at the other man as if to say, "look what you've done, this is all your fault".

"You're the one always reminding me that Felicity makes her own choices," Oliver muttered when Digg was close enough.

"Yeah, I just wish they weren't starting to look so much like yours. Seriously, you two are perfect for each other."

The words had been chosen carefully. Digg delivered them easily, even flippantly, as if they carried neither meaning nor weight. The opposite was true, of course: he had picked the phrase carefully and for a particular reason. Felicity called it "dropping a proverbial bomb".

That was what John had done. He offered his words up like a sacrifice and then stepped back to watch the effect. And there was definitely an effect. As soon as the words registered with Oliver, the other man's jaw clenched. He stilled in that preternatural way that John sometimes still had a hard time understanding, the lines of his shoulders pulling taught with sudden tension. Digg had come to recognize that reaction: it happened whenever Oliver had to exert an unexpected amount of control over himself or his reactions. The action always put Digg in mind of a wild animal, tensed and waiting for the environment to tell it whether to fight or flee.

Digg was an astute observer. Felicity was an open book and she knew it, but Oliver was not as unreadable as he seemed to think he was. When they were together – as in, within ten feet of each other – they were so transparent that Digg felt like he was looking at them from behind a magnifying glass.

In that regard, Felicity was mostly unchanged. Oliver, however, had lost much of his opaqueness in recent weeks. The two of them were like polarized magnets: they moved together automatically, and filled the room with a tension like the pull of opposites when they were apart.

So John picked his words carefully and then tossed them into the air so he could see how the pieces fell. The picture the pieces created was familiar, because he had already seen it before, in a nice Italian restaurant on the other side of town.

Oliver was saved from making a reply by Felicity's approach. She had a steaming cup of coffee in one hand.

"You okay?" she asked, looking right at Oliver. "You look tense."

"Fine," Oliver answered quickly. He hoped she didn't notice the look Digg gave him. "Coffee again?"

"Yeah. You're not going to yell at me, are you? Because I should warn you that Digg already tried that, and it didn't work."

"No yelling," Oliver promised.

"Well then in that case, would you like a cup?"

Oliver glanced down at her cup. "Let's start with half a cup. I don't have your tolerance."

"That's probably a good thing."

Digg doubted that Oliver wanted a cup of coffee as much as he wanted to get away from him and his not-so-careless comment. He waited until Oliver and Felicity had moved away to shake his head in exasperation.

"I know you heard what I said to Digg." Felicity's voice was calm as she watched Oliver prepare a cup of coffee to his liking. She had once vowed to never bring him coffee, but she still knew exactly how he liked it.

"Then you know I'll hold you to it," Oliver replied. "A whole month of sleep."

The teasing was gentle and masked a real current of concern, but Felicity smiled. She appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood a little. He had known she was upset earlier – was still upset – and it was nice of him to make an effort.

Which is why she decided to tease him back. "What are you going to do, chain me to the bed?" Well, apparently she wasn't going to tease him so much as flirt. In a ridiculously sexual, embarrassing sort of way.

The moment the words were out of her mouth Felicity's cheeks caught fire. She couldn't decide whether to be horrified or laugh, because how in the hell did she manage to get herself into these situations?

Oliver's stomach swooped dangerously. His eyes, which had been trained on hers until that moment, flicked down to her lips reflexively. Oh, he could think of plenty of ways to make sure Felicity stayed in bed for a month, but most of them didn't involve sleep.

He could have let her comment go. She had made many such sexually charged comments in the past, all of which he'd let slide, and he could do that this time as well. He could ignore it completely, or change the subject, or even just walk away.

Oliver could have done any of those things, but he didn't. Instead, he grinned wickedly and leaned closer than was necessary to pick up his coffee mug.

Quietly, suggestively, he responded, "If I have to."

Felicity's mind went straight to the image of Oliver, that same wicked smile on his face as he leaned over and …

She swallowed audibly and tried not to stare at his lips. "Good thing I don't have bed posts." She hadn't meant to whisper.

Oliver opened his mouth to respond and then thought better of it. He was standing too close, and she smelled wonderful, and he had the sinking suspicion that if he started kissing her then it would be a long time before he stopped. Instead, he winked at her.

No one had to know that Felicity spent the rest of the night cursing herself for not buying a four post bed, or that Oliver had thought of at least a dozen ways to get around that particular obstacle before an hour had passed.


	11. Is it still a win if there's no fight?

_**Author's Note: so this chapter is shorter than the last few. I blame it on a few things, not the least of which is that end of semester crunch. Also, I felt like the ending to this chapter was pretty organic - it just feels like it should end where it does. Be happy - I almost ended it on a cliffhanger. I'll try to get the next chapter up soon. Sorry for any mistakes, this is un-beta'd and my brain is absolutely fried.**_

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Oliver stepped out of the bathroom freshly showered. He'd left Felicity to her computers more than two hours ago and, unable to contain his energy and the slight caffeine buzz from the coffee, decided to get in a late work out. Digg and Roy had already gone home and without the sound of his blood rushing through his ears or his grunts of exertion, Oliver noticed how quiet the lair was.

He started toward the computers and opened his mouth to ask Felicity something, but he closed it quickly when he realized that she was slouched over the computer desk. The closer he got, the more certain he was that Felicity had fallen asleep in front of the monitors – again. Digg had been right, she was definitely working herself too hard. Felicity needed several hours of uninterrupted sleep in a real bed.

Oliver had stopped walking a foot or two away from her. He had taken a single step forward when one of the monitors let out a harsh pinging sound.

Felicity was startled awake. She flung one arm out and the back of her hand cracked loudly against the bottom edge of one of the monitors just as her kneecaps drilled the underside of the table. The mix of unpleasant sensations made her yelp, but she was already too busy frantically looking over her computer screens to do anything else.

"Felicity?"

Even in her befuddled state, Felicity recognized that particular inflection of her name. In that single word she knew that Oliver was asking her if she was okay. And, since she was clearly fine even though her hand might sting a little, she ignored the implied question completely.

"I got a hit," she said instead. Her fingers almost smashed out a rhythm against the keyboard. "Well, I mean, I've gotten lots of hits from the DMV search, but I think I've finally gotten a useful one. Remember that shot I showed you from the store security footage, when I asked if that dark mark on the thief's neck looked like part of a tattoo?"

Oliver hummed an agreement. He caught Felicity rolling her shoulders out of the corner of his eye and then watched her frown without apparently knowing that she was doing so. Oliver suddenly found himself stepping forward and reaching out with the hand closest to her. He found the spot under her shoulder blade by memory and started rubbing away the soreness.

"Well, I was right," Felicity continued. "I went back and changed the search parameters to look for anyone with the approximate height and build from … whatever, you get it. The point is, neck tattoos aren't really a common thing - I mean, I don't know much about tattoo culture, but …"

"Felicity."

"Right. Four hits came back as possibilities." She pulled up four DMV photos. They were all men, and all had some form of tattoo visible on their neck at the bottom of the photo. Felicity pulled up the still image that she had taken from the security footage and told the computer to superimpose that over the license photos. "This program will give us the most likely match."

"How accurate is it?"

"Accurate." The search program flashed green around the edges. The other three pictures dissolved, leaving only one in the center of the screen: a man with a thin face and dark hair who didn't look much older than Roy. Felicity read his stats. "Andrew Goodman, twenty-four, 3230 Missouri Avenue."

Oliver's hand dragging across her back and falling away as he turned was what made her actively realize that he had been giving her a one handed massage for the last few minutes. Felicity's mind threatened to get stuck on that fact until she forcefully shoved it away and turned her chair around to watch Oliver. He was pulling his suit off the mannequin.

"What are you doing?" Felicity questioned. "Shouldn't we wait for everyone else?"

"We will. I'm just going to do a little recon, see if there's any activity at that address."

"Ok, first of all, wow. That sounded like something Digg would say. Secondly, I really think we should wait for him."

Oliver had his leather jacket in hand when he turned to face her. Her eyes looked so tired behind her glasses, but her expression was firm as she approached.

"Felicity, I'm not going after him. I just want to scope out the house. I won't even need the comm link, so you can go home and get some real sleep."

Felicity cocked her head to the side and glared at him. "Yeah, nope. That's not happening. Oliver, you can't just show up outside the home of a terrorist, without back up. This guy has killed three people. With bombs. What if he does live there and he sees you? What if he's smart enough to have rigged the place to blow? You can't just go waltzing in there, okay, especially not alone. And if you think that I'd just leave you to do something so incredibly stupid to go home and sleep, or anything actually -."

"Hey."

Oliver stepped right up to her and Felicity had to lift her chin so that she was looking into his eyes again, and not at a spot on his chest. She took a deep breath and closed her mouth, then compressed her lips into a thin line. This was like the time she'd freaked out after that phone call from Sara, only she was running on inconsistent snatches of restless sleep, and too much coffee, and she knew exactly what was going on. Unlike that time, Felicity knew exactly what was at stake here.

Oliver itched to reach for her but forced himself not to. He'd already done that once tonight. In fact, he was walking a fine line these days where Felicity was concerned. He was apparently losing the ability to resist touching her, or flirting with her, or remaining distant in damn near any way.

"You're right," he said then. "We'll wait until tomorrow, when Digg and Roy are here and we have a plan."

Oliver turned around to put his jacket back on the mannequin. Felicity furrowed her brows as she watched him, unsure of what to think.

"What?" Oliver asked when he saw her expression.

"Well now I'm afraid to go home," she admitted dryly. "You didn't even put up a fight."

He sighed. She thought that he was just waiting for her to leave so he could go out alone. "Felicity. I'm not going anywhere. Now go home and get some sleep."

Felicity didn't say anything as she moved away to gather her personal effects. She kept casting what she hoped were covert glances at Oliver as she did so. He was always so determined to do whatever it was he'd decided to do, and yet he hadn't tried to fight her on this. He wasn't prowling the lair angrily, or glowering at her in that scary way he'd perfected. Instead, he was just … getting ready for bed.

"You can stop looking at me like that."

Felicity narrowed her eyes at him. Oliver was turned away from her and facing his bed.

"Like what?"

"Like I'm going to run out the door as soon as you're gone."

"Are you?"

Oliver grabbed the bottom hem of his shirt and pulled it off over his head before turning to give her his most bland expression.

"No."

Felicity believed him. He didn't look as exhausted as she felt, but he did seem tired, and that was saying something. Out of everyone on Team Arrow, Oliver needed the least amount of sleep. She was willing to bet that she needed the most.

"Good. I'll call Digg and Roy in the morning, let them know what we found."

"Don't you have to work?"

Felicity shook her head. "The owner is still trying to do the inventory for the insurance claim for the robbery. The store won't be open until next week."

"Okay." Oliver punctuated the word with a nod. Another thought occurred to him then. "Are you going to be okay to drive home?" When she hesitated a little longer than he was comfortable with he said, "If you're too tired to drive, you can take the bed again."

Felicity took on that determined expression he knew so well. "No. I'm not taking your bed again. I'll be fine, the drive isn't that far."

"Felicity, you were passed out at your desk not ten minutes ago."

"I wasn't -."

"Passed. Out."

"Oliver. I bought that bed for you, not so that I could steal it from you whenever I was too tired to drive home."

"So you are too tired to drive," he countered.

Felicity snorted in exasperation and made for the stairs. "Go to bed."

Oliver intercepted her before she'd gone a dozen steps. He caught her carefully around the wrist, arresting her motion. Surprised, Felicity glanced from where his hand held her up into his face. He was looking at her earnestly.

"I'm serious, Felicity," he said. "You're tired. You've been working too hard and sleeping too little, and I don't want to worry about you falling asleep behind the wheel."

Felicity intended to argue, but when she opened her mouth no sound came out. She was tired. Like, down to her bones, this-is-not-a-nap-it's-a-small-coma tired. Despite that, there was just no way she could take Oliver's bed (again) and relegate him to sleeping on dirty training mats with a clear conscience. She refused to do that.

"I can make it home."

His expression clearly told her that she'd have a better chance of convincing him that she was Elvis.

"I promise, Oliver. I'll be fine. I'll even text you when I get home, if you want."

Not the best middle ground to meet in, but if she was really determined to go home then he wasn't doing her any favors by delaying her. Oliver released her wrist.

"I'm not going to sleep until I get that text." He knew that the comment bordered on manipulation, because he was using the fact that Felicity cared about his well being as leverage so that she wouldn't forget her offer.

Felicity knew that, but it didn't anger her. Instead, she rolled her eyes at him. "I'm the worrier, remember?"

"I'm older," Oliver retorted quickly. "I've had more practice."

She smiled a little even as she shook her head in mock irritation. She started to walk away and then, over her shoulder, said, "Don't be such a drama Queen."

In his defense, Oliver waited until Felicity was at the top of the stairs to smile.

The chill air woke her up a little more when she stepped out into the alley. There might have been a small amount of irresponsibility in her decision to drive home, but Felicity found that she suddenly craved the softness of her bed. Her bed was wonderful; she loved her bed.

When she got into her car, Felicity took the time to choose one of the more upbeat playlists on her iPod and then cranked the volume up a little louder than she generally would at such a late hour. She reversed carefully out of the garage and onto the main street.

She tried to formulate a plan as she drove to keep herself awake. Was it possible to sneak up on a bomber? Did Andrew Goodman even live at that address anymore? Digg had been a soldier; maybe he had some useful knowledge about bombs. That wasn't to say that Oliver didn't know about bombs, because really, he knew a lot about a lot of things that surprised her. Which was weird, really, but whatever, because it was just a part of Oliver and that man was … well, weird.

Felicity was so glad that he'd agreed not to go to that house tonight. She was exhausted and her brain wasn't firing on all cylinders. Even when she was thoroughly rested and at the top of her game Oliver still managed to get into some situations that she could barely keep ahead of; she didn't want to think of all the things that could go wrong in a situation where she felt as she did now. They all took enough chances as it was, there was no reason to add going off half-cocked to that list.

By the time she got home, Felicity's feet were dragging. Her whole body was dragging. She kicked her shoes off in the mudroom, slipped out of her coat and left it in a heap on the kitchen floor, dropped her purse onto the couch and practically crawled into bed. She had enough clarity of mind to pull her hair out of the ponytail holder and haphazardly half-toss her glasses onto her night stand. She had just closed her eyes and taken a deep breath against her pillow when she remembered that she'd promised to text Oliver.

With a loud groan she pulled herself out of bed. Felicity was certain that she'd turned into a zombie as she shuffled her way down the hall to retrieve her phone from her purse. She found Oliver's name and typed out a text on autopilot.

Her phone pinged with a reply less than a minute later. She pulled it closer to her nose to read.

_I'm going to assume that's supposed to say "home"._

What? Felicity concentrated on reading what she had typed to him. In the spirit of brevity, she'd typed only one word: home. Instead, there was no "M"; she had seriously just texted the word "Hoe" to Oliver. She groaned again.

_It is. Auto-correct is the bane of my existence. I was not calling you a hoe_.

In the morning, Felicity would feel really bad about not being able to keep her eyes open long enough to read his reply.


	12. Lucky

_**Author's Note: sorry for the delay in this one folks, those college classes got the best of me for a bit. Anyway, this is a good one (if I do say so myself!). I hope you guys like it ... will you let me know?**_

* * *

Before the day he had boarded the Queen's Gambit, almost everything in Oliver's life had come easily to him. Well, the things that he had cared about in those days, anyway; things like beautiful women, and nights out with his best friend that were so crazy he couldn't possibly forget them – if he could remember them in the first place. He had Tommy, and Laurel, and enough money and charm for every model (or woman in general) that crossed his path. He had been a little shallow and too young to care, insulated from the harsher realities of the world by wealth and a mother who had maybe cared a little too much sometimes.

The five years between the shipwreck and the day he came home more than made up for that ease. Everything was a fight. Life, freedom, autonomy; Oliver had fought for all of it. In the pursuit of those things, though, he had forgotten what they actually were – how much those things were worth. It no longer mattered what he was fighting for, only that he was fighting, until the fight itself was all that he could see; all that he could care about.

Now, the fighting was the easiest part of his life. Oliver understood fighting in a way that he understood few other things. The footwork; the parry and thrust and flow of movement from one stance to another; the motion of drawing back his bowstring and aiming an arrow; those were the black and white truths in Oliver's world of gray. Fighting opponents – even fighting for his life – was simple. Everything else was difficult. Being around people and trying to discern what they wanted from him felt impossible some days. The weight of expectations that lurked behind some people's gazes, like Thea and Laurel, dragged at him painfully. He didn't know what to do with those expectations, because he knew he could do nothing but disappoint them. Sometimes Oliver felt like being around them was a task that required monumental effort – and some days, he just didn't have it in him to try.

That was not true of Felicity. Being with her was as natural as it was enjoyable. Her expectations of him were not painful because they didn't include some version of himself that he could never be again. Oliver never felt like she was looking at him, and searching for someone else. She saw him as he was, and accepted him as such. Felicity constantly challenged him – to be better, to find another way, to evolve – but she also freed him.

Felicity was both his roots and his wings; the person who continually urged him to believe that he could fly, and gave him a place to land.

There was no cataclysmic event to spark a light bulb moment in him. He'd been lying face down in his bed last night, chuckling to himself over Felicity's ability to commit a verbal gaffe over text message – _I was not calling you a hoe _– when he'd just sort of acknowledged that rock in his chest for what it was: love. He was in love with Felicity Smoak. He hadn't always loved her, of course, but now that he was in the middle of it he couldn't remember the time before it had begun. His feelings for Felicity – no, Felicity herself was an integral part of his happiness. There was no happiness for him without her.

Oliver had known that he meant that profession of love he'd given her in the mansion. The only thing he hadn't known was just how he meant it. Felicity was important to him, and had been for quite some time by that point. Only in the intervening months had he permitted himself to see exactly how important she was; only lately, in the face of their budding flirtatiousness and almost-intimacy, could he admit that he'd meant exactly what he'd said. Felicity was the woman he loved. _The person you love the most_, Slade had said; _your beloved Felicity_.

And she was; she really was.

He'd woken that morning with his cell phone barely tucked under the edge of the pillow. Oliver remembered answering her last text – _Go to sleep, Felicity_ – but not falling asleep himself. He had reached out immediately for his phone in an entirely childish display of anticipation and checked for a reply from her. A small part of him had been disappointed not to find one, but he'd smiled anyway when he thought that she'd likely been asleep before she'd even finished reading his answer.

No, there had been no monumental epiphany for Oliver. He had simply gone to bed knowing that he loved her, and woken wanting to tell her so.

Oliver was just finishing with the top button of his black and blue dress shirt when his phone rang. He grinned when he saw Felicity's picture on the screen.

Maybe Fate was teasing him.

"You're not gonna call me a hoe again, are you?" he said by way of greeting.

Felicity huffed on the other end of the line. "I should really get a pass on that one, since it was actually auto-correct's fault. And I was practically a zombie in the first place. I've pretty much been living off of coffee, which is probably not my best idea, since I feel like a zombie. I'm a coffee zombie."

"A coffee zombie," Oliver repeated. "That's … odd."

"I prefer creative. Anyway, I was just calling to tell you that I've already talked to Digg and Roy; they're on their way in. They'll probably beat me there, actually. I'm gonna stop at that little store around the corner, I'm out of coffee creamer."

"But you're not out of coffee?"

"Oh no, I brought in a brand new can last night."

Oliver shook his head. "Coffee zombie is right," he muttered.

"Don't you start with me," Felicity chided. "I'm sure Digg will give me an earful as soon as he sees me, and at least one of you has to be on my side."

"I'm always on your side," Oliver answered quickly. Well, that was a double entendre if there ever was one.

"Good," Felicity responded lightly. "You may have to help me hide the coffee from Digg. Anyway, I was just calling to say that if the three of you come up with some idiotic plan before I get there, I'll be pissed."

"Noted."

Oliver could almost hear her nod. "I'll be there in a bit. And I wasn't joking about the coffee."

"I won't let Digg touch your coffee, Felicity."

"I'm holding you to that."

Only after they had hung up the call did Oliver realize that he hadn't stopped smiling from the moment he'd seen her contact photo. He felt a little ridiculous, but since there was no one there to witness it, he didn't bother to stop.

A handful or more of the darkest moments of Oliver's life were some of his clearest memories. Intense trauma didn't seem to dull his memories the way it did for other people; no, it served only to push things into the realm of startling clarity. The moments before Robert Queen shot himself; his last look at Sara before she was pulled into the inky black water with the yacht; the soul crushing last moments of his mother's life; all those and more were ingrained painfully in his memory bank.

Those moments would have been enough for anyone, and they were certainly enough for Oliver. He could have lived the rest of his life without adding to them.

He could have, but he didn't.

Ten minutes after Felicity's phone call another such moment blossomed into an event horizon.

Digg and Roy had just stepped off the stairs together. Oliver was thinking about coffee – namely, how serious he should take Felicity's insistence that the coffee needed to be hidden from Digg – when his phone rang again.

"Hey," Felicity said when he'd greeted her, "I'm just leaving the corner store. I picked … hang on."

A motorcycle engine sounded clearly over the line, passing quickly.

"Is that -?" Felicity started. Then, a sharp intake of breath, and a shot of adrenaline flooded his veins. "Oh my god."

"Felicity? What is it, what's going on?"

Digg and Roy were watching him closely, but Oliver paid them no mind. He was already moving toward the stairs.

"A motorcycle just passed me and I thought I saw him drop something by the curb … it's a bomb. Oliver … I'm standing in front of a bomb."

Running was a necessary skill on the island; it was a life saving skill, even, and one that Oliver had honed just as carefully as the rest of his skills.

He had started running before Felicity had finished her sentence. He took the stairs three at a time, deaf to the footsteps that rang out behind him, and burst out of the lair door and into the alley. He clenched his fist around his cell phone, which was no longer being held to his ear, and propelled himself forward at a dead sprint.

The corner store wasn't far – maybe a block away from the lair. Oliver skidded around the corner and out of the alleyway, his line of vision open to the main street that ran parallel to their hideout. He didn't stop running as his eyes scanned the environment.

Felicity was a bright spot of color amongst industrial gray. Oliver couldn't quite see her face, but she was immobile and obviously staring at a spot some distance in front of her. He followed her line of sight: on the edge of the curb, a foot or so away from the crosswalk button, was a nondescript blob that, from this distance, looked like a carelessly tossed piece of trash.

"Get back!" Oliver yelled as he charged toward her.

Felicity visibly startled and looked in his direction. He was close enough now to see that her mouth was slack, either in shock or fear, and Oliver pushed himself harder. The bomb was to his left, Felicity to his right; his path was angled so that he'd catch her from the side.

Dimly, a part of his brain registered the ticking; he had just enough time to lock his eyes on Felicity, who turned her body in his direction. She took a step toward him.

Oliver dove for her.

A great cloud of fire and light blossomed on his left. Heat prickled along his cheek, ear and arm as a boom concussed the air, the shock wave knocking him away from the blast. His arms, which he had spread wide as he jumped, collided with Felicity; Oliver locked them around her automatically, snatching her out of the air and crushing her to his chest as they were blown back and away. He had just enough presence of mind to turn them in a direction that he hoped would put him between her and the ground.

The next thing Oliver was aware of was shouting and alarms. He blinked against the sunlight and his bleary vision; two grim, terrified faces appeared above him.

_Felicity!_

He lifted his protesting head off of the pavement. Felicity had landed mostly on his chest, but she wasn't moving. Oliver opened his mouth to speak but all that came out was a wretched cough.

Digg must have understood, because he reached down with one hand to check her pulse.

"She's unconscious," he said.

Oliver tried to nod and failed. His head was killing him and his skin felt rubbed raw in at least two different places, but he could feel the slow rise and fall of Felicity's back as she breathed beneath his arms.

"Is she okay?" Oliver rasped.

"I can't tell." Digg did not sound happy.

"You shouldn't be here when the ambulance arrives," Oliver told him. He closed his eyes against the war drums that had taken up a beat behind his eyes. "…Can't explain why we're all in the middle of the Glades."

"I live in the Glades," Roy said from somewhere beside him.

Oliver felt like there was something he wanted to say to that, but he fell unconscious before he could.

* * *

"Oliver!"

"Mr. Queen, can you hear me?"

"They need medical attention, what are you doing?"

"He won't let go of her, Sir."

"Miss Smoak -."

"Oliver. Can you hear me? Oliver?"

Opening his eyes felt like wading through congealed syrup, or swimming headlong into a current with a lead weight around his ankles. Slowly, so slowly, Oliver forced his eyes open. Consciousness brought with it a cacophony of pain and conflicting sensations and he groaned deeply. Against his chest, someone shifted.

Felicity; Felicity was against his chest.

Because of a bomb.

Oliver jerked as his eyes, which had fallen shut once again, snapped open. His muscles protested and his head screamed, but he raised it off the pavement and fixed his eyes on Felicity. She was still pressed against his chest and held tightly in the circle of his arms, but she was awake and giving him the most relieved look. Her glasses were gone and there was a bright pink spot on her cheek that had nothing to do with a blush.

He tried to speak. "…'Licity."

"I'm okay," she answered quickly. "The paramedics are here, Oliver, but they can't help us until you let me go."

Oliver blinked at her. On the periphery of his vision he could make out several police officers and flashing lights, and above and behind Felicity he spied a handful of waiting paramedics.

Digg's face came into focus above him. The other man obviously hadn't followed his advice to go back to the lair, and Oliver was thankful. Digg's presence helped to further ground him in the present.

The skin of his left arm retracted and pulled painfully as Oliver relaxed his muscles. He clenched his jaw against the sensation and watched as Felicity started to struggle to her feet, helped along by a waiting paramedic. Once she was clear, he made an effort to sit up – a motion that his head was quick to decry. Digg slipped an arm behind his shoulders when he swayed and then helped him to his feet as a swarm of paramedics descended on him.

Oliver kept his eyes trained on Felicity as he was led to the open back of an ambulance. She was sitting in an identical ambulance, her chin held immobile and angled up toward the light as the woman in front of her administered first aid to her cheek. She tried to turn her head toward him as he passed but the paramedic held her steady.

Stepping up into the ambulance was more than Oliver felt he could manage. He insisted on simply sitting gingerly on the bumper despite the attending paramedic's protestation that his current state left him a little more than unbalanced. When he showed no signs of moving, the man harrumphed quietly and moved away to get his supplies.

Across the way, not far from the scene of the blast, Detective – now Captain – Lance was speaking with Digg. Oliver wondered what cover story his friend was giving for their presence at the scene, or why the three of them had been in the Glades (together) in the first place. That was when he realized that Digg was still there, but Roy was not.

The paramedic returned with a mobile first aid kit and a bottle of water. Oliver drank it greedily, downing half of the bottle in a single go. When he was satisfied, the paramedic told him that he needed to help him out of the remnants of his button up shirt. There wasn't much material left.

He was extremely grateful for the presence of the white t-shirt he always wore under his shirts then. He was not ashamed of his body, but he didn't want to deal with the veiled gazes and unasked questions that always accompanied the reveal of his scars and tattoos.

"How is she?" Oliver finally managed to ask. His voice was raspy and not quite there; it faded in and out between syllables.

"Your girlfriend is fine, Sir. You shielded her from most of the blast, and the collision with the ground. You have second-degree burns along your ear, part of your cheek, and most of your left forearm. That alone is amazing – you were close enough that you should have third degree burns, at the least. You most likely have a mild concussion and a back full of bruises, but I'd say you both got very lucky."

Oliver forcefully ignored the other man's ministrations to his injured arm. He had never considered himself a particularly lucky person, but in this case he was willing to go with it.

Less than twenty-four hours ago he had finally acknowledged that he was in love with Felicity; less than an hour ago, he had almost lost her to a senseless act of violence. He could still hear her voice in his ear telling him about the bomb.

A bomb. Of all the things; of all the times that he had put her in the line of danger as the Arrow, and today it had been something as asinine as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This situation had nothing to do with him or their vigilante work. In fact, this situation had nothing to do with anything – it was perfectly, thoughtlessly random. In a way, that made it worse; made him angrier. There was no reason for it. There was never a reason – well, never a good reason, not really – for Felicity to be in danger, but now …

She had been walking home from the store in the middle of the day. Nothing could have been more senseless.

So, while lucky had never been a word Oliver would have used to describe himself, today it felt perfectly true.

(At no point in his mildly befuddled train of thought did it strike Oliver as odd that he considered Felicity to have been walking home, rather than to the lair.)

The paramedic palpated over Oliver's torso and back to check for broken ribs and internal bleeding. A few painful spots on his back caused Oliver to suck in air loudly and flinch from the other man's hands, so he lifted his shirt and repeated the application of pressure, much to Oliver's dismay.

"There's extensive bruising on your back, Mr. Queen, but I don't suspect internal damage. I'm going to take you to …"

"No."

"Mr. Queen -."

Felicity stepped around the open door then. The patch of irritated pink skin on her cheek looked glossy, probably from a burn salve, and he could easily pick out another such patch on her right arm, but she looked okay for the most part.

More importantly, she was alive.

"Are you okay?" Oliver asked. He didn't need to, but he wanted to hear her voice.

"Can't complain, all things considered. What about you?"

"I'm fi …"

Felicity cut him off by turning her attention to the paramedic who was still kneeling behind him. She obviously wasn't going to fall for his "I'm fine" routine this time.

"He should go to the hospital," the paramedic informed her. "He's got second-degree burns on his cheek, ear and arm, a likely mild concussion, and his back is one giant bruise. I don't suspect internal damage, but he should go to the hospital and get a full check to be sure."

"I'm fine, Felicity."

"I'll give you two a minute," the paramedic said. He hopped out of the back of the ambulance and moved to the knot of first responders standing around the scene.

"Oliver, you were nearly blown up today."

"_We _were," he corrected.

She nodded. "Yes, but thanks to you, I'm mostly okay." She motioned to the white burn bandage that covered his arm. "You …"

Oliver watched her choke on the end of the sentence and duck her chin. He reached for her with his good arm, brushing his fingertips over her elbow and up the back of her arm as he guided her forward. She took a step to the side of his legs, but he wiggled a little and spread his thighs so that she could step between them.

"Hey."

Felicity's eyes were luminescent and full of tears that threatened to spill over at any moment when she looked at him. Her bottom lip trembled.

"I've had worse days," he told her.

She offered him a watery smile. "A bomb, Oliver. God, a _freaking bomb._ I just … I couldn't believe it, you know? That stuff only happens in action movies, I mean; it's not supposed to happen anywhere else, is it? And then I heard you shout and for a second I didn't know why you were there."

Felicity was already standing in front of him, his inner thighs brushing her hips, and his hand hadn't moved away from her arm. He lifted his injured arm gingerly, the movement slower than normal, and brushed the first tear away from her good cheek. He didn't dare touch the singed one.

"Why were you there, Oliver?" Her words were gaining speed. Oliver knew that she was panicking, and that her words would only come faster as that panic took hold. "What the hell were you thinking, running at a bomb? You run away from a bomb, Oliver, not toward it! That's, like, survival tactic number …"

"Felicity." His throat was sore and his voice was too low. Her name sounded slightly odd, the vowel sound between the F and the L disappearing under a layer of scratchiness, but she cut herself off mid-rant. "I was there because you were there."

She kissed him then, or maybe he kissed her; it didn't matter who moved first, only that her lips were finally against his. Oliver kissed her carefully, gently, sliding the hand that had been on her cheek back into her hair. He moved his other hand off of her elbow and draped his arm across her lower back so that she was utterly surrounded by him.

The kiss was sweet, tender even, and Oliver forgot his injuries for the first time since opening his eyes.

"Captain Lance wants to ask you both some questions." Digg's voice was even and soft as he said the words.

They didn't quite pull away. They were no longer kissing, but Oliver could just feel the barest brush of her upper lip against his; their breath mingled and warmed his chin. He opened his eyes hesitantly but didn't let go of Felicity.

Felicity blinked a few tears off of her eyelashes and locked gazes with Oliver, who was watching her so intently her heart somersaulted and fell into her stomach.

"Okay," she answered. "Send him over."

Digg didn't seem surprised, either by Felicity's answer or the fact that he'd just walked up on them kissing. He half turned and waved the Captain over as Felicity turned herself to face them. She made no move to step away from him, and Oliver was grateful for that. He was not ready to let her go.

Oliver shuffled himself farther back, until his lower back found the edge of the ambulance floor, and then he carefully pulled himself up the few inches. The arm of his that had been on her back was now around her waist; he splayed his hand over her stomach and pulled her back gently.

"Sit down," he murmured.

Felicity lowered herself into the spot on the bumper that he had just vacated. She braced an open palm on the top of his thigh; his hand did not leave her stomach.

Quentin Lance only looked surprised for a minute before schooling his features again.

"You're both lucky to be alive," the Captain started.

Oliver's hand clenched against Felicity's stomach.

"You don't have to tell us, Captain," Felicity answered, squeezing Oliver's thigh in reassurance.

"Did you see the man responsible, Ms. Smoak?"

Felicity told him what little she had noticed – and remembered – about the person on the motorcycle. Oliver cataloged the details for himself as his thumb absently brushed circles against her stomach through the material of her shirt. Then she started in on explaining her version of events, complete with Oliver running at her from across the street.

He lost the thread of conversation after a minute. At one point his eyes traveled up and met Digg's, who was watching him closely. When their gazes met, the other man arched a single eyebrow and quirked one corner of his mouth into a small smile. Oliver's lips twitched ever so slightly in response.

"The paramedics tell me you have a concussion, Mr. Queen, so I won't question you, but is there anything you'd like to add?"

Oliver tried to clear his throat but it did little to get rid of the rasp that accompanied his words. "Only that I really hate this guy."

Lance made a face, but it seemed to be an expression of agreement rather than irritation. "We'll get him. Until then, try to remember that you're supposed to run away from a bomb."

"I was running toward Felicity," he responded automatically.

Lance gave him an unreadable look. Then he turned his gaze on Felicity, and he smiled a little. "Guess it's on you to run away from the bombs, then."

"Done. Thank you, Captain Lance."

The police Captain moved away, leaving Digg, Oliver and Felicity alone.

"What was he doing here?" Felicity queried. "Captains aren't normally in the field."

"He was on his way to the precinct when the 911 call was made," Digg explained. "He was here before the paramedics. You two okay?"

"I am, but Oliver …"

"Is bruised, but okay," he interjected. Then, before she could protest, "Where's Roy?"

"Lair," Digg said quietly. "Lance has seen us together before, but I thought it best if the kid made himself scarce."

Oliver nodded. "Good. We'll -."

"Mr. Queen, Ms. Smoak, if you could please step into the ambulance." The paramedic that had helped Oliver coalesced in the space next to Digg. His expression was one of determination.

"I don't need …" Oliver started.

"Of course," Felicity said simultaneously.

Oliver sighed, his breath heating the curve of her ear. Felicity turned her head slightly so that she could partially see him.

"We're going to the hospital," she told him quietly. "You're gonna need something for those burns, and you're going to let them make sure there's no internal damage, because _bomb_. Okay?"

"Okay."

"I'll meet you there," Digg told them. "Felicity, do you have another pair of glasses somewhere that I can bring you?"

"There's a new box of contacts … downstairs. If you could bring those, Digg, I'd love you forever."

"I thought you already did?"

"Okay, I'll love you even more."

Digg was smiling as he stepped away. Felicity called to his retreating back, "And don't touch my coffee!"

The paramedic stepped up into the ambulance and then helped Oliver to his feet; he in turn offered his hand to Felicity. She clambered in relatively easily and stepped away from the rear double doors so that the paramedic could close them.

Felicity took a step toward the stretcher on the opposite side from Oliver and was stopped by a hand wrapping around hers. When she glanced up, he tipped his head carefully toward the empty space beside him and tugged at her hand. She felt uncertain for the tiniest moment, but he was still holding her hand and waiting patiently.

Without a word, Felicity settled herself next to him on the stretcher, hip to hip. After a second she turned her hand palm up and interlaced their fingers.

They didn't let go of each other once.


	13. Together

_**Author's Note: Well friends, this is it - the last chapter. I didn't realize that this would be the last one until I was writing it, but I really think this is where it ends. The characters are in a good place and where I want them to be. There will be an epilogue to address a few things that I want to address, but this is the last proper chapter. I hope that you guys have enjoyed the ride. Thank you so much for all of your reviews/favorites/follows - you all make this such a wonderful experience, and your support means the world to me! =)**_

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Felicity stepped into the hospital room just as Oliver reached for his shirt. His back was to the door, and thus to her; she sucked in a sharp breath of air as her eyes fell on the now purple expanse of skin there. She crossed the room and thoughtlessly held out a hand to drag the pads of her fingers over the patchwork of bruises that stretched nearly from shoulder to hip. The touch was light and hesitant.

"Are you okay?" Her voice wasn't nearly as strong as she'd intended it to be.

"Just bruised," Oliver answered.

Felicity made no reply. She traced the ragged edge of mottled skin along his shoulder blade. In the three years that they had known each other, she'd seen Oliver with injuries that were ten times worse than extensive bruising and a mild concussion. And yet – emotionally speaking, this felt no different.

Maybe that was because she knew exactly how Oliver had gotten this injury; or maybe it was the memory of watching him sprint toward her. Maybe it was because Felicity could still remember the way her heart had stopped when she opened her eyes and found herself clutched in immobile arms that, for just a moment, she had feared would never move again.

Oliver turned his head to the side so that he could see her. Her fingers were raising goose bumps over his skin.

"Don't ever do that again."

"Felicity." Oliver let his shirt fall back on to the hospital bed and turned to face her.

Her hand was still raised and now hovered just inches above his bare chest. She stared at her hand, and his bare skin, for several seconds before raising her eyes to meet his.

"I mean it, Oliver. Promise me. Promise me you won't ever do something like that again."

Oliver slid an open palm over the back of her upraised hand and then pressed both of their hands against his chest. Her small hand was chilled, and rested directly over his heartbeat.

"I can't make that promise, Felicity. I won't."

She felt more than heard the steady rhythm of his heart beneath her hand. No, that wasn't a promise that Oliver would make, no matter how much she wanted him to.

_I was there because you were there,_ Oliver's words echoed in her mind. _I was running toward Felicity._ Then, three words that felt as if they'd been uttered a lifetime ago: _I love you._

The hand over hers curled inward. The pressure made her realize that she was staring at their hands again, so she looked up to find Oliver watching her.

He'd told her he loved her. Maybe he did, or didn't, or maybe he didn't mean it the way she wanted him to; none of those things changed the fact that she loved him – was in love with him – and that they'd almost been blown up today.

Oliver could have been willingly blown up because he had chosen to run toward her, instead of away.

The damn fool!

"Do it anyway."

"What?"

"Do. It. Anyway. Promise …"

"Felicity," he interrupted, and then he was kissing her.

Oliver let go of the hand of hers against his chest so that he could frame her face with both of his hands. He kissed her with quiet passion, the fire of all that he'd tried to resist simmering beneath the insistent slide of his lips over hers.

Felicity's lips parted as she sighed against his mouth. Oliver took the opportunity to trace the swell of her bottom lip with his tongue; she curled her hand against his chest, her fingernails digging in to the skin there, and then slid her tongue over his.

"So is this going to be a thing now?"

Digg was standing in the doorway with both arms crossed over his chest.

Oliver and Felicity broke apart but they didn't move away from one another. When Oliver moved his attention to the other man, Digg gave him that barely there smirk he'd perfected.

"Thing?" Oliver repeated.

"Thing," Digg affirmed. "You know, where I'm apparently just going to keep walking in on you two kissing?"

Oliver glanced down at the woman in front of him. He was looking to her for guidance, because he honestly had no idea what to say to that.

Felicity cleared her throat. "Yeah, that's probably gonna keep happening."

Digg grinned. "Okay." He stepped over the threshold and withdrew the box of contacts from his coat pocket to offer them to Felicity. "I didn't see any contact solution, but I can get you some if you need it."

Felicity smiled and took the box from him. "I'm good. Thanks, Digg."

She extricated herself from Oliver reluctantly and excused herself to the bathroom. She heard Oliver asking about Roy as she slipped out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom.

The temporary solitude was good for her. Felicity used it to mentally run through the events of the last several hours as she put in her contacts: almost blown up, check; saved by her own personal hero, check; and kissed (or been kissed by) Oliver twice in as many hours, check. Not to mention that she had just apparently told Digg that she and Oliver were in a relationship. Right? Is that what they'd just agreed on, in not so many words?

Well, she'd told Digg that the kissing thing was going to keep happening, and she knew what she'd meant by that, but did Oliver? Felicity wasn't against casual, no strings attached kissing, but that was not an option with Oliver. All of her strings were involved at this point, and they all led back to that oh-so-important muscle in her chest. There was nothing casual about their kisses.

When Felicity made it back to Oliver's hospital room it was to find Digg gone.

"He's waiting outside," Oliver explained before she asked. "Ready?"

She nodded wordlessly but didn't move.

"You okay?" Oliver queried as he walked over to her.

"Just, so we're clear. When I said that the kissing thing was gonna be a, well, a thing, I meant … I mean … I just want to be sure that your thing and my thing are the same thing."

Felicity furrowed her brow. That had sounded decidedly less sensible and articulate than she'd hoped.

"Hey," Oliver said quietly, reaching out to slide a hand up the back of her arm. "We're whatever you want us to be. No pressure, no rush."

"Are you sure? Because I want a relationship, Oliver, and if you're not ready -."

"I'm ready. I'm yours, Felicity. If you want me."

She studied his face. He was looking at her the way he had that night in the mansion, and the morning he'd pulled her against his chest and massaged her shoulders; and she believed him.

"Good," she said with a decisive nod. She rose up on her tiptoes to press a kiss against his lips. "Let's go."

* * *

"You have a concussion, Oliver."

"A mild concussion, Diggle."

"Still a concussion."

"I'm not letting another night pass without doing anything to catch this guy!"

"I'm not asking you to."

"Really? Because that's what it sounds like," Oliver snapped.

"That's because you're choosing not to listen," Diggle retorted.

"All right!" Felicity interjected. She stood up from her chair and moved into the space between the two men. "Arguing isn't going to get us anywhere."

"Obviously," Roy muttered from across the room.

Felicity glared at him. He shrugged carelessly.

"The kid and I can handle this, Oliver."

"Would you stop calling me a kid?" Roy was clearly irritated.

Diggle ignored him.

"That's not the point, Diggle." Oliver's tone was terse and he clenched his jaw.

Digg recognized it as a tell, and he took his usual course of action whenever he perceived one of Oliver's tells: he pushed. "What is the point, Oliver?"

Oliver tried not to grind his teeth in frustration. Damn John Diggle and his penchant for making everything difficult, and for pushing him until he said whatever it was he was trying not to.

"This man is leaving bombs all over the city," Oliver ground out. He was trying hard not to lose his temper. "He's killed three people already. I should have gone after him last night, but I didn't, and today he almost blew up my …" Oliver bit off the end of the sentence. His eyes automatically fell from Digg's face to Felicity's.

Felicity put a steadying hand on his bicep.

He took a deep breath and looked first to Roy, then back to Digg. "We're a team, Diggle. We go together, or not at all."

Digg let out a heavy sigh after several moments of silence. His arms, which he had crossed over his chest, dropped to hang loosely at his sides.

"We'll get the van," Digg finally said, motioning for Roy to head for the stairs.

"Thank you," Oliver replied.

"I'll get my tablet," Felicity piped up. She spun back to the computer table to grab what she needed.

"What?"

Oliver had turned his attention to the woman who was now sweeping up her various electronic devices, and so did not see the way Digg ushered Roy quickly up the stairs and out of the room.

"I'm coming with you," Felicity said in her most matter-of-fact tone.

"No."

"You said it yourself, Oliver. We're a team. Together, or not at all. Great sentiment, by the way. That could be our catchphrase: Team Arrow – together, or not at all. We should have t-shirts made."

Oliver ignored the babble in favor of putting both hands on her tiny shoulders. His thumbs brushed once over the material of her sleeves. "Felicity -."

"I'm going with you, Oliver," she cut him off. "If that house is rigged to blow and it has any kind of closed circuit trigger, then I will be there to do something about it."

"Don't you think one close call is enough for the day?"

"Yes, I do. Enough for the whole year, actually, but we both know that's not how this works. That guy is still out there, and I want to catch him. His next victims might not be lucky enough to walk away, Oliver. So we're gonna go fight the good fight, and get this guy off the streets, and then our little mob family is gonna come home – safe. Together."

Felicity watched one corner of his mouth pull up into a smile. His hands were still on her shoulders, but his face was getting closer. Her heart was spinning like a top in her chest.

"Mafia family," he corrected quietly. "Not mob. Remember?"

"Whatever," Felicity whispered. Her eyes flicked down to his lips.

Oliver kissed her tenderly. The hands on her shoulders glided carefully up the column of her throat and came to rest along her jawline. When he pulled away, his hands stayed where they were.

"Don't fight me on this, Oliver," she murmured. Her eyes traced the angles of his face before returning to his eyes.

"I won't apologize for wanting to keep you safe, Felicity."

She opened her mouth to protest, but was silenced prematurely by the delivery of another quick kiss.

"But I won't argue. This time."

"One battle at a time," Felicity quipped brightly. "Now let's go clean up the city."

Oliver masked his grin with a sigh. He was less than happy about this situation, but it was hard to resist smiling when confronted with Felicity Smoak; whom he now had the privilege of kissing whenever he pleased. He was definitely going to enjoy getting used to that particular development.

Oliver grabbed his bow on the way to the stairs. Felicity was already busy tapping away on her tablet, ascending the stairs with mindless ease. Watching her only intensified the feeling of correctness that had blossomed in Oliver's breast; Felicity belonged here, and she belonged with him.

The lair was more than a basement, or a hideout for a vigilante: this was their home. This was the place that lost souls found each other, the place where they learned to trust and forgive and grow. This was where his family was forged, and where they belonged.

Together, or not at all; indeed.


End file.
